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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 












MILESTONES 

ON THE 

WAY TO LIFE 


S' 


A- 


BY 


WILLIAM F. ROBISON, S.J., PH.D. 


< \ 


St. Louis University 


B. HERDER BOOK CO. 

17 South Broadway, St. Loui9, Mo., 

and 

68 Great Russell St., London, W. C. 

1923 


IMPR1MI POTENT 



Sti. Ludovici, die 10 Martii, 1923 

F. X. McMenamy, S. J., 
Praepositus Promncialis 

Prov. Miasour. 


NIHIL OBSTAT 

Bti. Ludovici, die 10 Aprilis, 1923 

F. G. Holtoeck, 
Censor Librorum 

IMPRIMATUR 

Bti . Ludovici, die 11 Aprilis, 1923 

Joannea J. Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus 
Bti. Ludovici 


Copyright, 1923 


B. Herder Book Co. 


All rights reserved 


Printed in U. 8 . A. 


JUN-1’23 


©C1A704766 

— - I 


MY “ALMA MATER” 
ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY 


FOREWORD 


This is another C. C. C. volume; for, like 
its predecessors, its subject matter orig¬ 
inally formed the substance of discourses or 
conferences delivered in St. Francis Xavier 
.(“ College”) Church, and therefore it be¬ 
longs to the series of “ College” Church Con¬ 
ferences. Like its predecessors, too, this 
work is presented not as a compilation of 
lectures, but as a useful treatise upon a very 
important subject. 

Preceding volumes have dealt with the 
Catholic Church, with its Author, and with 
the foundations upon which it rests, as also 
upon the sacramental streams of grace 
which it holds within itself for the weal of 
mankind. 

It is by the Sacraments that the Church 
brings men to “life” and to the fuller pos¬ 
session of this divine gift. Still, save in 
the case of infants, who by reason of their 


FOREWORD 

condition are incapable of any preparation 
for this sublime guerdon of divine life, there 
must be a preparation for this magnificent 
gift. This preparation may be considered 
under a twofold aspect, individual and 
general. 

In ways manifold and mysterious does 
God draw to Himself and to His truth and 
His love the souls of men who have not as 
yet found the true way home. These ways 
are as diverse as the whisperings of the Holy 
Spirit Himself—and as unsearchable. Into 
this personal and individual preparation 
for God’s fuller gift we do not inquire. 
But, there is a general process of God’s 
Providence, the elements of which are dis¬ 
cernible in the adorable variety of His deal¬ 
ings with individual souls; and the steps of 
this Providence can be traced in the path¬ 
way by which He leads adults to Himself. 
There are, in fact, fixed “ Milestones on the 
Way to Life,” and these it is the purpose of 
the present work to study. We shall study 
them under the guidance of the Church, 
which is “Christ’s Masterpiece,” given to 
us by God through “His Only Son” and un- 


FOREWORD 


shakable as the “The Bedrock of Belief .’’ 1 

It is hardly necessary to state that the fol¬ 
lowing pages are intended first and fore¬ 
most for the children of the Church, who 
are the beneficiaries of the sacred sacramen¬ 
tal system which holds the fruits of Christ’s 
redemption. Yet, their loving ambition is 
to be of help also to others who are not of 
the fold, so that they too may come to the 
One Shepherd. 

Here, as in previous volumes, no claim 
is made to any special novelty either of 
thought or of treatment. Truth with clear¬ 
ness and clearness with truth—these have 
been the target aimed at, with the hope of 
bringing “men, my brothers,” nearer to 
our Father in heaven. 

Due acknowledgment is hereby jnade to 
standard theological works. 

William F. Robison, S. J., Ph. D. 
St. Louis University, 

Easter, 1923. 


i Titles of other works by the author. 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 

ABRAHAM—FAITH 

PAOB 

Life of soul, object of Christ’s mission. Sancti¬ 
fying grace is this life. It means salvation 
and holiness: its nature: its effects.—Grace 
normally comes through Sacraments. Prep¬ 
aration needed in adults. Outline of prepa¬ 
ration found in Council of Trent: these 
dispositions the subject of present work, 
with types from Old Testament,—Abraham 
the type of faith. His history.—Faith’s 
place in justification. Error of unbelievers; 
of Protestants.—Nature of faith. False posi¬ 
tion of so-called Reformers; of Modernists.— 
Application: living faith; patience; peace; 
purity; charity.1 

CHAPTER II 

DAVID—REPENTANCE 

Recapitulation of doctrine on faith. Further 
advance made by penance. Outline of rest 
of process of justification.—Nature of re¬ 
pentance; includes sorrow and detestation 
for sin, resolution of amendment. Luther’s 
error: its basis. Truth founded on revela¬ 
tion. Necessity of penance.—Penance based 
on faith; term to which one comes through 



CONTENTS 


PAGE) 


fear and hope and love.—David as type. 

His career: his sin: his return to God.— 
Application: sense of sin and acknowledg¬ 
ment of our position. Lesson of ages of 
faith. Condition of to-day: hypocrisy.—Ex¬ 
cellence of penance, as preparation for sanc¬ 
tifying grace, as abiding state of soul 
through life.46 


CHAPTER III 

ELEAZAR—FEAR 

Fear a disagreeable thing. Fear, even of God, a 
hateful thing to many; yet it is sacred.— 
Intermediate stages between faith and pen¬ 
ance: reducible to fear, hope, love. First 
of these, object of present inquiry.—Nature 
of fear and its value. Is strong call to good¬ 
ness. Luther’s error. Humble faith fears 
God’s judgments. Vain reasons for denial 
of punishment.—Fear of God, holy and sal¬ 
utary: Old Testament commendation; New 
Testament lessons. Kinds of fear: fear of 
slave; of servant of God; of child of Father. 
Value of each.—Effect of holy fear; Eleazar 
a type. Persecution against Jews: Eleazar 
a victim: his ordeal and his triumph. His 
fortitude mothered by holy fear.—Applica¬ 
tion: many do not fear God and do fear 
men: examples.83 


CHAPTER IV 

JOB—HOPE 

Hope, next step towards repentance and justifi- 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 


cation. Power of hope; in material things; 
in supernatural efforts.—Nature. Material 
objects: God our Supreme Good; means to 
God, namely, help of actual grace and re¬ 
mission of sins. Our need of grace. Hope 
flows from faith. Errors as to nature of 
hope. Twofold error of Reformers; by ex¬ 
aggerating; by minimizing. Motive of hope 
is holy: proof.—Necessity for repentance 
(example of Peter and Judas) ; for conduct 
of life.—Job as type. His history; his ex¬ 
ample.—Grounds of hope. Christ’s loving 
care for us.—Effects: patience; spiritual 
outlook as against materialistic viewpoint; 
courage. 


CHAPTER V 

MARY—LOVE 

Faith with repentance, based on fear and hope, 
general and ordinary preparation for justi¬ 
fication. Beginning of love already con¬ 
tained in this preparation. After this, life 
through sacrament. Extraordinary and par¬ 
ticular economy of grace brings sanctifica¬ 
tion by love of charity.—Man’s need of a 
friend; most of all, of a divine Friend. 
Charity founds this friendship.—Nature of 
charity: benevolence. Sublime in unselfish¬ 
ness, but not beyond us; easy. God’s gifts 
evoke gratitude and gratitude mounts to 
love. Christ’s call to hearts.—Mary, type of 
love of charity. Two scenes in her life as 
examples.—Effects: source of perfect sor- 


121 



CONTENTS 

PAQH 

row; motive of great deeds for God and 
man; healing for wounds of world. . . . 164 

CHAPTEK VI 

THE SYNAGOGUE—THE CHURCH 

Purpose of considerations recalled: for others; 
for selves. All our sufficiency from Christ: 
no one ever saved without Him. “Economy 
of preparation” and “economy of realiza¬ 
tion”: also two phases of faith in Christ: 
the Synagogue and the Church.—Church of 
Old Law, type. Law of nature. Falling 
away of nations. God’s providence, prepar¬ 
ing for Mosaic Law.—The Synagogue. Its 
character: nation and church: power of 
teaching, sanctifying, ruling. Its history: 
its limitations.—Church of New Law, reali¬ 
zation. Institution. Nature: its mission. 
Marks. Identification: Catholic Church. 
Necessity of Church. Achievement.—Appli¬ 
cation and conclusion.203 



MILESTONES ON THE 
, WAY TO LIFE 


CHAPTER I 

ABRAHAM—FAITH 

Life of soul, object of Christ’s mission. Sanctifying 
grace is this life. It means salvation and holi¬ 
ness: its nature: its effects.—Grace normally 
comes through Sacraments. Preparation needed 
in adults. Outline of preparation found in 
Council of Trent: these dispositions the subject 
of present work, with types from Old Testa¬ 
ment.—Abraham the type of faith. His 
history.—Faith’s place in justification. Error 
of unbelievers; of Protestants.—Nature of faith. 
False position of so-called Reformers; of Mod¬ 
ernists.—Application: living faith; patience; 
peace; purity; charity. 

When the Son of God became the Son of 
Man; when “the Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us”; 1 when He stooped down 
to the lowliness of our humanity and took 
upon Himself the burden of our sorrows 

i John i, 14. 


1 


2 


MILESTONES 


and of our sinfulness, the great object 
which was before Him, as He sought to do 
the will of the Father, was this—that He 
might bring His loved ones to the true life. 
“I am come,” He said, “that they may 
have life, and may have it more abun¬ 
dantly,” 1 life eternal in the heavenly man¬ 
sions of the Father’s house, and life, true 
and divine, even here below through the 
mysterious and overwhelming gift of sancti¬ 
fying grace. 

We shall begin to appreciate the value of 
this sanctifying grace, if we recall to our 
minds the fact that it means salvation and 
holiness. Yes, it means salvation. Great 
indeed is the worth of a human soul and 
great too is its natural beauty. But, when 
to that soul is added sanctifying grace, its 
heightened beauty transcends the splendor 
of the whole material universe, by as much 
as the shining of the summer sun outgleams 
the feeble glimmering of a glow-worm. 
With grace the soul is the royal one by the 
side of the King, the glorious one of whom 
the Psalmist said: “The queen stood on 

i John x, 10. 


•) 


FAITH 


3 


thy right hand, in gilded clothing; sur¬ 
rounded with variety. ’ 11 Moreover, since 
the elevation of man to the supernatural 
destiny of the blessed vision of God, the ab¬ 
sence of sanctifying grace from the soul 
means not only the lack of the patent of 
nobility, but the presence of sin, that 
monstrous evil which destroys from before 
the face of God. Yes, grace means salva¬ 
tion, and that means our all. With grace 
we are saved; without it we are lost. 

It means holiness too: it is godliness, be¬ 
cause it is God-likeness. It is sanctifying 
grace which makes men Christ-like. In the 
Redeemer of mankind the root of all His 
greatness, as of all His sanctity, was the 
Hypostatic Union, that union of the human 
nature with the divine in the Person of the 
Word. This substantial or personal union 
it was which made Christ the Man the 
natural Son of God. This union it was which 
made each of the human acts of Christ of 
infinite value and merit. And it is this 
union which is shadowed forth, though ever 
so feebly, by our own union with God 

i Pg. xliy, 10. 


4 


MILESTONES 


through sanctifying grace. And as the 
hypostatic union gave to Christ’s actions 
their infinite value, so grace is the dignify¬ 
ing principle of our lives. It is the vivify¬ 
ing principle in the order of the divine. 
Just as, in the natural order, the soul is the 
principle of all natural life, the source of 
all the higher faculties, the font of all vital 
activities; so, too, in the supernatural plane, 
sanctifying grace is the soul of all. It 
makes us live; it makes our good works 
worthy of the sight of God, worthy of the 
recompense which they so completely merit, 
worthy of the eternal diadem of glory 
which will one day crown them. 

This sanctifying grace, which is truly 
life, is a supernatural gift of God, more 
precious than anything which the material 
world holds in its wealth of gold and silver 
and pearls and diamonds and other gems. 
It is a very real, though a very mysterious, 
thing; it is a physical reality, infused by God 
into the soul—and it produces results com¬ 
mensurate with its divine sacredness. 

It makes us partakers of the divine 
nature and founds the equality which is nec- 


FAITH 


5 


essary for the love of friendship. It is not 
merely as the creatures of His hands that 
God loves us; it is not only as a mighty 
sovereign might love the greatest of his sub¬ 
jects. He would love us as a friend loves 
a friend or as a lover cherishes his beloved. 
Now, a certain equality is necessary to 
change patronage or condescension into the 
love of friendship; and it is by sanctifying 
grace that God has made us as much His 
equals as even He could make us. As St. 
Peter says in words inspired from on high, 
“He hath given us most great and precious 
promises; that by these you may be made 
partakers of the divine nature.” 1 

We do not participate in the perfections 
of God which are incommunicable, such as 
His infinity and His omnipotence; for we 
remain human beings, and God is ever God. 
Yet we are likened unto God by a participa¬ 
tion that is very real. By the presence of 
grace the soul is born again and lives with 
the life of God. It is likened unto Him in 
holiness; for, as God by His infinite holiness 
turns to acts that bear the stamp of im- 

i II Peter i, 4. 


6 


MILESTONES 


measurable sanctity, so by grace the soul 
has the fundamental power of acts which 
make for the greater and greater uplifting 
of the friend of God. The soul through 
grace is likened unto God in that supreme 
quality of knowledge which is proper to 
Him; for, according to the Fathers of the 
Church, grace is the seed of glory and 
differs only in degree from that glory in 
which we shall see our God face to face in 
the immediate and unveiled vision of the 
Godhead. Even now we have by grace the 
root of the power of thus looking on our 
God in the vision which means heaven. 
Though this power is now undeveloped, the 
day will come, if we guard this grace, when 
the root will grow into the fruit, when the 
bud of grace will blossom forth into the 
flower of glory, and in full reality “we shall 
be like Him” more and more, “because we 
shall see Him as He is.” 1 
This partaking of God’s nature goes on 
to our adoption as His children, an adoption 
which really and internally changes us from 

i John iii, 2. 




FAITH 


7 


sinners to saints, from objects of God’s 
wrath to the children of His love. Yes, un¬ 
speakable as is the privilege, by sanctifying 
grace we are made the sons of God. “He 
hath delivered us from the power of dark¬ 
ness, and hath translated us into the king¬ 
dom of the Son of his love.” 1 “Behold 
what manner of charity the Father hath be¬ 
stowed upon us, that we should be called, 
and should be the sons of God. . . . Dearly 
beloved, we are now the sons of God. ,? 2 St. 
Paul exults in the same glorious truth and 
draws its equally glorious conclusion, when 
he says: “For the Spirit Himself giveth 
testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons 
of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs in¬ 
deed of God, and joint heirs with Christ: yet 
so if we suffer with Him, that we may be 
also glorified with Him. ’ ’ 3 

This sanctifying grace, then, is the life 
to which we must tend, if we have it not, and 
which we should guard as the pearl of great 
price, if we are so blessed as to possess it. 

1 Coloss, i, 13. 

2 I John iii, 1, 2. 

3 Rom. viii, 16, 17. 


8 


MILESTONES 


Yet, in God’s sweet Providence there is a 
preparation which normally goes before the 
attaining of this life divine. 

The chief channels of this sanctifying 
grace are the Sacraments, and, first of all, 
Baptism. These Sacraments our Blessed 
Lord left in the keeping of His Church to 
apply to the souls of men the fruits of His 
redemption, to guard His dear ones from 
the cradle to the grave, and to help them in 
every phase of their lives. Yet for these 
Sacraments, and, in the first instance, for 
the one which opens the way to the rest, 
Baptism, one must prepare himself, if he is 
capable of so doing. 

This preparation it shall be our endeavor 
to study. Under the guidance of Mother 
Church we shall follow along the pathway 
where stand the “ Milestones on the Way to 
Life.” And all through our study we shall 
try to take to heart the lessons which are 
vouchsafed us; we shall strive for a deeper 
appreciation of the things that lead to holi¬ 
ness ; and thus we shall establish more.firmly 
within our souls the sacredness of the sover¬ 
eign sway of God. 


FAITH 


9 


We need not dwell upon the preparation 
for justification in the case of infants. 
Such as these are incapable of any prepara¬ 
tion whatsoever. So, through the great 
love of God they receive the heavenly glory 
of grace and of consequent godliness with¬ 
out any preparation at all; and in uncon¬ 
scious babyhood they are made the children 
of God, as the waters of Baptism wash them 
from defilement and incorporate them into 
the mystic Christ. It was thus, without any 
preparation, that God’s grace first came to 
most of us. 

Passing by the case of infants, then, we 
shall ponder deeply on the preparation for 
justification in the case of adults who come 
to God for the first time or who return to 
Him after wilfully forfeiting all super¬ 
natural excellence. Before such as these 
are finally blessed with the pearl of great 
price, they are prepared and disposed for 
the gift of God. The benison of grace is, in¬ 
deed, gratuitous and flows forth from the 
bounty of God without any real meriting 
right on the part of the recipients. Yet, 
these recipients have a part, too. God’s 


10 


MILESTONES 


heavenly assistance calls them and aids 
them onward to life; but they must freely 
assent to this heavenly lure and must co- 
operate with its sacred promptings. They 
are not dragooned into salvation; they are 
not coerced into sanctity; they are not 
driven or dragged into holiness. 

The Council of Trent gives a most illu¬ 
minating declaration of the process of 
preparation whereby adults are brought to 
justification. This declaration will form 
the basis of considerations most profitable 
to us for the conduct of our lives, inasmuch 
as the same dispositions that make for the 
first coming of sanctifying grace to the soul 
of man tend to the safeguarding and the in¬ 
crease of this same heavenly life within the 
hearts of God’s children. 

In its sixth session the Sacred Synod 
says: “They (sinners) are disposed for 
justice, when, aroused and helped by divine 
grace, they conceive faith from hearing and 
are freely moved towards God, believing to 
be true what He has revealed and promised, 
and above all that the wicked is justified by 
God through His grace ‘by the redemption 


FAITH 


11 


which is in Christ Jesus’; and when, under¬ 
standing themselves to be sinners, from the 
fear of divine justice by which to their 
profit they are overwhelmed, they turn to 
the consideration of God’s mercy and are 
lifted up to hope, trusting that because of 
Christ God will be propitious to them; and 
when they begin to love Him as the fountain 
of all justice and, in consequence, are moved 
against their sins by a certain hatred and 
detestation, that is, by that penance which 
must be done before baptism; in fine, when 
they propose to receive baptism, to begin a 
new life, and to keep the divine command¬ 
ments. . . . Upon this disposition and 
preparation follows justification itself, 
which consists in the remission of sins and 
the sanctification and renovation of the in¬ 
terior man.” 1 

So, the stages are these: faith; repentance, 
which flows from the holy fear of God, from 
hope in His mercy, and from at least the be¬ 
ginning of love for Him. These are the 
Milestones on the Way to Life. 

Our purpose, then, is to consider each of 

1 Sess. vi, cc. 6, 7.—Denzinger, Enchiridion , nn. 798, 799. 


12 


MILESTONES 


these dispositions, and to consider them not 
merely in so far as they are a preparation 
for holiness, but in so far as they are also 
the qualities which should forever have part 
in the lives of the children of God. 
Furthermore, in order to bring these dis¬ 
positions home to ourselves in a more con¬ 
crete manner, it will be well to see them ex¬ 
emplified in living models; and these models 
we shall look for and find in the old dis¬ 
pensation of God, which was itself a prepa¬ 
ration for His more blessed economy in the 
law of love. 

The Old Testament had a value of its own, 
great and sublime; but it was also a figure 
of what was to be and a type of the future 
more abundant outpouring of God’s bounty. 
Too much is it forgotten. Too much is it 
slighted. Hence, our consideration of types 
from the Old Testament will aid us in ap¬ 
preciating its value and in realizing better 
the love of God, which has ever brooded over 
the race of men, but which was reserving 
its sweetest manifestations for us, who are 
the objects of special predilection. 

The first of the dispositions for justifi- 


FAITH 


13 


cation and sanctification is faith, and Abra¬ 
ham, the father of believers, is its type. 
Let us begin with this. 

The Apostle St. Paul tells us that we are 
justified by faith, and gratuitously . 1 And 
the meaning of his words is that faith is the 
beginning of man’s salvation, the founda¬ 
tion and root of all justification; without it 
it is impossible to please God or to come to 
union with Him. Necessary as faith is, our 
justification is nevertheless the free gift of 
God; for, none of those things which precede 
justification, whether faith or works, can 
strictly and as of real right merit the grace 
of sanctification. These truths it will be 
sufficient to have mentioned for the present. 
We shall come back to them later. Now let us 
occupy ourselves with looking at the type of 
faith. 

St. Paul says: “It is written: Abraham 
believed God, and it was reputed to him unto 
justice. Know ye therefore that they who 
are of faith, the same are the children of 
Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing 
that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, told 

i Rom. iii, 22, 24. Cf. Denz. n. 801. 


14 


MILESTONES 


unto Abraham before: In thee shall all na¬ 
tions be blessed. Therefore they that are of 
faith, shall be blessed with the faithful of 
Abraham. ’ ’ 1 

The faithful Abraham! Truly, he was 
faithful; truly, he was the chosen of God. 
He was the son of Thare, of the land of Ur 
of the Chaldees, and the favor of God 
marked him out for His sublime designs; 
for, God had not forgotten the wayward 
children of His love. Wayward, indeed, 
they were, and by their crimes had forced 
God to turn His heart away from them. 
From the days when the waters of the deluge 
had wrought God’s angry vengeance upon a 
debauched humanity, the race had been 
growing again and filling the old earth. 
But men had not learned the lesson 
which God in His righteous wrath had 
taught. Once more they had taken to 
fleshly ways; their ideas of the sovereign 
Lord were debased; and forever and ever 
they were falling away into the folly of poly¬ 
theism. 

Under the shadow of the trees of Paradise 

i Gal, iii, 6-9. 


FAITH 


15 


God had spoken to the forebears of the race 
and had promised them a Redeemer in their 
sorrow and abandonment . 1 But the pledge 
of God had almost been forgotten by men. 
In order that all men might not grovel in the 
grossness of the worship of many gods and 
lose the memory of Him “who was to be 
sent, ’ ’ 2 the Lord would entrust the true 
worship of the true God and the safeguard¬ 
ing of the promise of a Redeemer to a chosen 
people. And Abraham would be their 
father. 

“And the Lord said to Abraham: Go 
forth out of thy country, and from thy 
kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and 
come into the land that I shall show thee. 
And I will make of thee a great nation, and 
I will bless thee, and magnify thy name, and 
thou shalt be blessed . . . and in thee shall 
all the kindred of the earth be blessed .” 3 
So, at the age of seventy-five years Abraham 
left Haran, where he had made his abode; 
and with Sara his wife, with Lot his nephew, 
and with his family and his flocks he went 

1 Cf. Gen. iii, 15. 

2 Cf. Gen. xlix, 10. 

s Gen. xii, 1-3. 


16 


MILESTONES 


out into the land of Chanaan. Later on, be¬ 
fore the gaunt spectre of famine, he went 
down into Egypt. Back again into Pales¬ 
tine he came; and there, in order that peace 
might be preserved, he separated from Lot 
and dwelt in Chanaan between the Mediter¬ 
ranean and the Jordan. Here, after rescu¬ 
ing Lot from the power of the Elamites, 
Abraham was met by the king of Salem and 
priest of the Most High, Melchisedech, who 
offered up bread and wine in sacrifice to 
the Lord and blessed the conquering patri¬ 
arch. 

In his fear and apprehension before the 
probable attacks of his enemies, Abraham 
was reassured by the word of the Lord, who 
said: “Fear not, Abraham, I am thy pro¬ 
tector and thy reward exceeding great. ’’ 1 
And fear fled away. But the heart of man 
was heavy within his breast, as he thought 
of the lack of a child to be his heir and to 
carry on his line. His servants would have 
all his substance—and he would not know 
the solace of a child of his own. And his 
sorrow found voice in humble reproach to 

i Gen. xv, 1. 



FAITH 


17 


the loving Lord. But the Lord ‘ 4 brought 
him forth abroad and said to him: Look 
up to heaven and number the stars, if thou 
canst. ... So shall thy seed be. Abraham 
believed and it was reputed to him unto 
justiceA 1 There was his staunch faith in 
the word of God. 

Yet, that faith was to be tried. Years 
passed; and Sara was without child; for the 
Lord had not blessed her. When Abraham 
was ninety and nine years old, the Lord ap¬ 
peared to him in a vision and renewed His 
covenant with him. To recall His promise 
of His servant’s numberless progeny, God 
changed the name of that servant from 
Abram, “noble, elevated father,” to Abra¬ 
ham, “father of the multitude .” 2 Not 
through Ismael, the son of the Egyptian 
handmaid, Agar, but through Isaac, the son 
of Sara, was the promise of the Lord to be 
fulfilled. “And God said to Abraham: 
Sara thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou 
shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish 
my covenant with him for a perpetual cove- 

iGen. xv, 5, 6. 

2 Cf. Gen. xvii, 5. 


18 


MILESTONES 


nant, and with his seed after him.” 1 “ And 
the Lord visited Sara, as he had promised; 
and fulfilled what he had spoken. And she 
conceived and bore a son in her old age. . . . 
And Abraham called the name of his son, 
whom Sara bore him, Isaac .” 2 The child 
grew to boyhood and to manhood; and the 
heart of Abraham rejoiced in his well-be¬ 
loved. 

Yes, Abraham believed. But his faith 
was now subjected to a fearful trial; for, the 
Most High ordered him to take his son and 
offer him in sacrifice in the place that would 
be shown him . 3 Surprise and wonder, yes, 
and deep and bitter grief rushed in upon the 
heart of the servant of God. Sacrifice his 
son! But, God was the Master of life and 
death; what He had given He might also 
take away. And as for God’s promise? 
Abraham believed. In some way God would 
redeem His word, whereby He had pledged 
Himself that through Isaac Abraham would 
be the father of many nations. Yes, He 
would redeem it, even though it were to 

iGen. xvii, 19. 

2 Gen. xxii, 1-3. 

8 Cf. Gen. xxii. 


FAITH 19 

mean that the Lord of life must raise the 
slain from death to life. 

Abraham believed. And rising in the 
night, he took two servants and Isaac, his 
son. He cut the wood of the sacrifice, and 
started forth upon the three days’ journey 
to Mount Moriah. In sight of the moun¬ 
tain, the servants were left behind. On¬ 
ward went the father and the son, the latter 
bearing the wood for the holocaust, the 
former carrying fire and a sword. And 
“Isaac said to his father: My father. 
And he answered: What wilt thou, son? 
Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the 
victim for the holocaust? And Abraham 
said: God will provide himself a victim for 
the holocaust, my son. ’ ’ 1 

Oh, that father’s heart! The victim? 
His boy—for, though grown to manhood, the 
child of his love was still his boy—his boy 
was to be the victim. But he could not tell 
him yet. “So they went on together.” 2 
At last the spot was reached; and then 
Abraham told his son that he was to be the 

iVv. 7, 8. 

2 V. 8. 


20 


MILESTONES 


victim, since such was the will of God. A 
hush; a prayer: and Isaac was ready to do 
his part. One last, long look around—and 
he was bound and laid upon the altar. 

That poor father’s aching, bleeding heart! 
What though the skies were bright ? What 
though the sun shone down upon a land that 
was fair to see? Within his soul all was 
dark and bleak, swept by the blasts of sor¬ 
row. “ And he put forth his hand and took 
the sword, to sacrifice his son.” 1 That 
sword had not yet touched his boy—it was 
never to do that; but its point had cut down 
into the bleeding depths of Abraham’s lov¬ 
ing heart. But, Abraham believed—and he 
raised the sword to deal the death blow. 
And lo! the angel of the Lord stayed his 
hand, and the word of the Lord bade him 
spare his son. “Now I know that thou 
fearest God, and hast not spared thy only 
begotten son for my sake. . . . By my own 
self have I sworn, saith the Lord, because 
thou hast done this thing, and hast not 
spared thy only begotten son for my sake: 
I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed 
i v. 10 . 


FAITH 


21 


as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that 
is by the sea shore. . . . And in thy seed 
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, 
because thou hast obeyed my voice. Abra¬ 
ham returned . . . and they went to Bersa- 
bee together, and he dwelt there.” 1 

Yes, without doubt, Abraham believed. 
There is the model of faith, so much praised 
by the inspired writers of the New Testa¬ 
ment of love. There is the example of the 
father of all believers. 

The part in justification and sanctification 
that belongs to faith is of supreme im¬ 
portance ; the truth as to its function in this 
regard arouses the violent opposition of 
many adversaries of the Christian verity. 
St. Paul tells us that “ Abraham believed, 
and it was reputed to him unto justice.” 2 
He tells us too that “ without faith it is im¬ 
possible to please God. For he that cometh 
to God, must believe that he is, and is a re¬ 
warder of them that seek him.” 3 And the 
Church, guarding the revelation of God, has 
always taught, as she teaches to-day, that 

iVv. 12, 16-19. 

2 Rom. iv, 3. 

»Heb. xi, 0. 


22 


MILESTONES 


faith is the beginning, the foundation and 
the root of all justification. 1 

This doctrine of Mother Church is par¬ 
ticularly exasperating to unbelievers and to 
the self-satisfied indifferentists of to-day. 
These cry out, with a fine assumption of as¬ 
surance and of full knowledge of the whole 
economy of God’s ways with man, that it 
makes no difference whether a man believes 
or what he believes, if only he is a good man. 
Now, there might be something in their 
claim, were it possible for one voluntarily to 
reject faith and still to be a good man. But, 
he cannot disdain the rights of the sovereign 
God, and still lay claims to moral goodness. 

“It matters not whether a man believes or 
what he believes, if only he is a good man”! 
A good man! If only, I suppose, he pays 
his debts and wrongs no man and is a care¬ 
ful provider for home and family and is not 
a sodden drunkard or a debauched roue! 
Truly, we find no fault with such a man for 
what he does, but for what he leaves undone. 
For his deeds of justice to men we praise 
him; but for his injustice to God we blame 

i Cf. Denz. n. 801. 


FAITH 


23 


him. For his regard for his wife and 
family, for his kindness to the poor, for his 
respect for clean living we esteem him and 
we bless him; but for his disregard for the 
claims of God we censure him. To say that 
it matters not whether a man believes or not, 
is to say that a man may with impunity call 
the great God a trifler or a liar, and that he 
may without guilt refuse to fulfill towards 
his Maker his strictest obligations. If a 
man deprive his fellowmen of property or 
of life, men call him a thief or a murderer; 
but if a man refuse to recognize God’s rights 
to the service of mind, as well as of hand, 
men call him “a good man,” provided he 
does not trample under foot the convention¬ 
alities of polite society! It is Pharisaism, 
pure and simple. For, to refuse to bow 
down the intellect in the assent of faith, 
when the revelation of God stands suf¬ 
ficiently clear before one, is a crime against 
heaven. To withhold the assent of faith 
may, it is true, be altogether guiltless. It is 
thus guiltless (and then only) when the fact 
that God has actually spoken is not yet 
patent. Still, even in this contingency, 


24 


MILESTONES 


man’s attitude of soul must not be one of in¬ 
difference, and much less one of hostility, if 
he would be free from guilt. 

For, in view of the Eternal One’s pro¬ 
vision of leading men to Himself by means 
of this visible creation, a man cannot for a 
long time remain in innocent ignorance of 
the God who made him. Unless he is sin¬ 
fully unfaithful to the light of reason and 
to the proofs which lie about him in the 
world at large, he must come to the 
knowledge of a personal God. And when a 
man admits the existence of a personal God, 
and, as a consequence, the possibility of a 
divine revelation, his disposition of mind 
and heart towards this Sovereign of his may 
not lawfully be one of disdain or of irre¬ 
sponsibility. There is the soundest reason¬ 
ableness in his entertaining a positive readi¬ 
ness and willingness, not to say an eager de¬ 
sire, to hearken if and when that Supreme 
Master deigns to speak to His creature. 
Nay, even when the actual fact of divine 
revelation is not yet established with moral 
certainty to the mind of man, if he has so 
much as a prudent doubt as to whether God 


FAITH 


25 


may have spoken, he lies under the impera¬ 
tive duty of making an honest inquiry. 
Otherwise he is guilty of sin against God. 
Only so long as a man does not see that God 
has actually made His revelation can the re¬ 
fusal to investigate and the withholding of 
the submission of faith be without the stain 
of disloyalty to God. And even if, for the 
reason assigned, it be guiltless, it is a sad 
and pitiable misfortune because of the 
lamentable privation of heavenly goods 
which it entails. 

The unbelievers and indifferentists say 
with virtuous indignation, that, in holding 
to this doctrine of the necessity of faith for 
the salvation of men, we are damning those 
who do not think as we do; that we are in¬ 
tolerant, and deserve to meet with the in¬ 
tolerance which in their outraged fairness 
of mind they proceed to mete out to us; that 
we are demanding the impossible, inasmuch 
as we require faith from those who cannot 
possibly have that faith, having never heard 
of the revelation of God. 

Truly, a brave show of objection! and so 
unselfish and disinterested! But, the fact of 


26 


MILESTONES 


the matter is, that we are not creating by 
our imagination some fantastic fiction and 
making it necessary for salvation by our own 
unauthorized dictum; we are only holding to 
the revelation of God Almighty, who has 
Himself placed faith as the foundation of 
all union with our God. We are not con¬ 
demning any man; we are only proclaiming 
the condition fixed by God as necessary for 
our coming home. We are not demanding the 
impossible from any one; but are only 
asserting the need of what, by the Provi¬ 
dence of God, will be within the reach of all 
who do what lies in their power, since God 
gives to all adults the graces necessary to 
come to the knowledge of the truth and to 
the attainment of salvation. 

The Council of the Vatican lays before us 
God’s plan with respect to man and shows 
us its justification. 1 God is our Creator and 
the Lord of heaven and earth. He guards 
and governs His creation by His sweet Prov¬ 
idence. From created things we can 
mount up and come to the certain and sure 
knowledge of our God. Yet, it has pleased 

i Cf. Denz. n. 1785 ff. 


FAITH 


27 


Him in His wisdom and goodness to reveal 
Himself and His eternal decrees by a super¬ 
natural manifestation. Had God left man 
in the 61 state of nature,” which as a matter 
of fact never existed, He would have sup¬ 
plied him with such means as would have en¬ 
abled him to lead a moral and religious life 
in accordance with his nature. But, in in¬ 
effable love, God has raised man to the di¬ 
vine order, and He governs him according to 
a supernatural Providence. In this order and 
under this Providence it is by His revela¬ 
tion and His grace that God furnishes man 
with the means to lead a life super¬ 
natural and divine and to arrive at a destiny 
which is far above the reach of mere nature. 
From the fact of this revelation from God 
flows the necessity of faith on the part of 
man. 1 

Only in the darkness of pride and of 
foolish self-sufficiency can man lay claim to 
autonomy and to independence of reason 
and of will. When God speaks, the very 
condition of our dependence as creatures 
establishes the necessity of believing what 

i Cf. Denz. n. 1789. ff. 


28 


MILESTONES 


our God has said; and not to do so is to of¬ 
fer Him the outrageous insult that He is 
either ignorant or a liar—and to do either 
is to deny His infinite excellence and His 
very existence. Faith is a homage of total 
submission to God—and it is so presented to 
us by the Council; it is a submission of intel¬ 
lect and will, a submission required by our 
dependence upon our Maker. It is, there¬ 
fore, an obligation, a solemn duty. But it is 
more than that. It is an incomparable ben¬ 
efit ; it is an indispensable help to realize our 
lofty destiny of sublime nobility. For, this 
destiny can be reached only when we tend 
towards our supernatural end as free and 
reasonable beings who know whither they 
are going and who freely will that which 
they do. And thus it is that without faith it 
is impossible to please God or to come to sal¬ 
vation. Faith is a part of justification. 

From the doctrine of works without faith, 
so dear to the unbelievers and indifferentists 
of the world, the pendulum of error swings 
to the other extreme, which glorifies faith 
without works and makes faith the whole of 
justification. But, faith is not the whole of 


FAITH 


29 


justification: one is not justified by faitb 
alone, as the old Protestantism of Luther 
and the so-called Reformers maintained. 

The whole of their false system was based 
on the erroneous foundation of the absolute 
and irremediable evil of poor, fallen human 
nature. For them the darkness must always 
remain as black as Stygian night, and it can 
never be illuminated even by the light of the 
sun of justice: man’s works are always sins, 
meriting the hatred of an all-pure God: free 
will has been extinguished in the fall of 
Adam, and is now only a fiction introduced 
into the Church by the devil himself: God 
does everything in man, his evil deeds as well 
as the good (though none are truly good), 
and this really and directly, in such sort that 
the treason of Judas is not less the work of 
God than is the loyal conversion of Paul. 1 

Horrible statements these, are they not? 
Yet, they are the doctrines of old Protestant¬ 
ism as to the way in which man is brought to 
salvation through justification. For, ac¬ 
cording to their principles, justification is 
not a remaking of man; it is not a re- 

1 Cf. Denz. nn. 771, 775, 776, 814*817. 


30 


MILESTONES 


birth; it is not a tranformation of his 
nature. It can be nothing more than a 
voluntary illusion on the part of God, who 
wishes to see Jacob in Esau and to bless him; 
who chooses to behold us clad in the merits 
of Jesus Christ, to forget, so to speak, that 
beneath this vestment there is nothing but 
defilement, and to declare us just and to treat 
us as holy, though we remain forever un¬ 
changed sinners. 1 We have no part in the 
entire work; we do nothing but take this 
mantle of Christ to cover our vileness; we 
hide behind Christ—and we do it by faith. 
And thus, according to them, faith is the 
whole of justification. Not only is faith not 
an unnecessary thing, as the unbelievers and 
indifferentists maintain; but it is every¬ 
thing. Nothing else is needed, neither grace 
nor works nor morality. 

That is their teaching. It is not the 
teaching of God. It is only the result of the 
intellectual wanderings of pride-guided 
mortals. According to God’s truth, re¬ 
vealed to men, justification is a rebirth, a 
transformation of the soul by sanctifying 

1 Cf. Dictionnaire Apologetique, s. r. “Foi” p. 39. 


FAITH 


31 


grace, which makes us partakers of the di¬ 
vine nature, heirs of God and coheirs with 
Jesus Christ. The sinner can and must dis¬ 
pose himself for this justification, not indeed 
without the grace of God, but by cooperat¬ 
ing with this help divine. 

In this preparation faith has a great 
part—the first place, as constituting man in 
the supernatural world, where the soul turns 
to God in honest repentance, which arises 
from the fear of God’s judgments, from 
hope in His mercy, and from at least the 
beginning of love. Faith is, beyond all 
doubt, a necessary disposition; but it is not 
sufficient in itself. For, if it is not accom¬ 
panied by works and vivified by charity, it 
is nothing more than a dead faith—and such 
does not avail unto sanctification. 

The faith without works, the faith which 
would justify of itself, is known neither to 
Scripture nor to Christian tradition. 
What, in truth, is the preaching of the Bap¬ 
tist, of Christ Himself, and of the Savior’s 
Apostles, if not a call to penance, as a prepa¬ 
ration for the Kingdom of God ? What is it 
but an appeal to men to believe, indeed, but 


32 


MILESTONES 


then to die with Christ to the works of the 
flesh in order to live the works of the spirit, 
like Christ and with Christ? Undoubtedly, 
the gospel of Christ demands faith in the 
truths revealed; but it equally demands lives 
conformable to these truths. And it is only 
by arbitrarily cutting certain texts, by sepa¬ 
rating them violently from their context, 
and by piecing them together in order to give 
some appearance of cohesion, that the au¬ 
thors and adherents of false systems have 
elaborated their doctrines. Once more, 
faith is necessary for justification and for 
salvation; but it is not sufficient of itself to 
effect the sanctification of the soul. It 
opens the door which leads to our Father’s 
home; but it does not take us through that 
door and bring us close to the great heart 
of the Lover of mankind. 

Not only with regard to the part played by 
faith in the justification of man have errors 
wrought their evil effect, but with reference 
to its very nature as well. Luther’s false 
doctrine about the effect of faith is accom¬ 
panied, to say the least, with a distorted 
notion about its very nature. For him, in 


FAITH 


33 


spite of the relics of old Catholic truth which 
he retained, faith appears to be almost en¬ 
tirely the confidence which assures one that 
God imputes to him the merits of Christ, by 
the illusion or delusion to which reference 
has been made. It is a faith of sentiment, a 
faith without dogma. 

Now, of course, it is true that real faith 
does imply confidence towards our good and 
merciful God. It does this as well by its 
very nature, as by its object and by the rela¬ 
tions which it establishes between us and 
God. It means the homage of our whole soul 
to the supreme truth, a response of our will 
and heart to the divine advances of love, a 
recognition of God’s sovereign rights and of 
our duties in His regard. It is all this. 
But, at bottom, it is intellectual; it is the 
adhesion of the mind of man to the infinite 
truth of the infinite God. 

The Vatican Council, in its masterly chap¬ 
ter on “Faith,” 1 thus puts before us the 
true notion of divine faith: “This faith, 
which is the beginning of salvation, the 
Catholic Church professes to be a supernat- 

iDenz. n. 1789 ff. 


34 


MILESTONES 


ural virtue, by which under the inspiration 
and with the aid of divine grace we believe 
what God has revealed, not because by the 
light of reason we have seen the intrinsic 
truth of things, but on the authority of God 
Himself who reveals, who can neither de¬ 
ceive nor be deceived.” 1 

So, faith is a manner of knowing, analo¬ 
gous to human knowledge based on testi¬ 
mony; yet it is distinct from this natural 
knowledge. All faith is taking the truth 
of a thing on the credit of others. When 
witnesses (one or many) with sure knowl¬ 
edge of what they declare and with truth¬ 
fulness in their declaration assure one that 
what they state is so, their statement is 
hedged round with convincing authority, 
which demands assent from the hearer—and 
this assent is an act of faith. If the wit¬ 
nesses are human beings, the faith is human 
faith; if the witness is God, the faith is the 
divine faith of which we are treating. Such 
faith is reasonable above all. We must, in¬ 
deed, know with certainty that God has 
spoken; and this fact of divine revelation is 

i Ibid. 


» 


FAITH 


35 


vouched for by the divine facts of prophecy 
and miracles, which are the sure signs of 
God’s speaking and are proportioned to the 
intelligence of all. This faith is also firm 
above all things, since its firmness is com¬ 
mensurate with the motive of assent, which 
is God’s infinite wisdom and veracity. It 
transcends natural knowledge, without at 
any time being in conflict with it. It is 
supernatural, and to arrive at it there is 
need of the help of God’s grace—and this, 
even with regard to the faith, which, not as 
yet informed with the charity of God, is 
only the first step towards the justification 
of the sinner. Such, then, is faith. 

Does all this seem to be without apparent 
application ? Do we, perhaps, wonder why 
such insistence is placed on the right under¬ 
standing of what faith really is ? The won¬ 
der will cease, if we reflect on what has come 
from the wrong understanding of this 
foundation of salvation. For, Protestant¬ 
ism is rooted in this erroneous idea—and 
we have considered some of the appalling 
doctrines that arise therefrom. Besides, 
the false liberalism of to-day and of former 


36 


MILESTONES 


times springs from it. In fine, Modernism, 
which has been rightly called “a collection 
of all the heresies,” 1 grows out of it, and 
attacks not some particular point of truth, 
but the whole doctrine of salvation with all 
its foundations. 

Born of the agnosticism of Kantian phil¬ 
osophy, nurtured by the sentimentalism of 
Schleiermacher, coddled by the rampant 
superstition of evolutionism, fostered by the 
pride of supposed learning and by the 
vaunted monopoly of erudition, Modernism 
has spread over the world like a baleful pes¬ 
tilence and has poisoned many a soul 
with its hellish vapors. Faith ? revelation ? 
dogma ? It admits them all in word; but it 
denies them all in fact, as it disfigures and 
perverts the very notion of these funda¬ 
mentals. And it has spread, oh so far! 
Within the Church, thanks to the watchful 
care of pastors and especially of the de¬ 
parted Pius X , 2 faithful and loyal and 
brave, its hidden revolting countenance was 
soon unmasked and the sheep’s clothing was 

1 Pius X. Cf. Denz. n. 2105. 

2 Cf. “Pascendi dominici gregis,” Denz. nn. 2071-2109. 


FAITH 


37 


torn from the ravening wolves who were 
destroying the flock of Christ. But, out¬ 
side of the Church the evil has hardly been 
checked. It has infected the minds of 
pastors and people, and has carried them 
farther away from the portal of truth—and 
it must logically end in utter infidelity. 

According to their principles of agnostic 
philosophy, the Modernists hold that God 
cannot be reached from the created things 
that are round about us, and that there are 
and can be no proofs of an exterior and 
objective revelation of God. It is from 
within man that the explanation of all 
religion must be sought. In fact, all reli¬ 
gion is only a tendency of religious imma¬ 
nence, and faith is nothing more than a 
certain sentimentalism, engendered by the 
need of the divine. This need, which is at 
first hidden in the inaccessible depths of 
subconsciousness, rises at times to the level 
of consciousness and arouses a peculiar 
sentiment, which, without any judgment or 
grasping of truth, envelops God and in a 
manner unites man with his Maker. And 
this sentiment they call faith. 


38 


MILESTONES 


The system is forced to bury itself in the 
dismal depths of agnosticism, from which 
there is no rational deliverance. It con¬ 
fuses natural and supernatural religion, 
and really destroys both. It makes all reli¬ 
gions equally true, and all of them false. 
It substitutes a faith of sentiment for a 
faith of intelligence. It does away with the 
necessity of dogmatic faith, in spite of 
Christ’s teaching, safeguarded by His in¬ 
fallible Church. It sweeps away the duties 
and obligations of conscience in face of the 
legitimate authority conferred by God. No 
wonder, then, that in the presence of such 
monstrous vagaries of the human mind, 
gone mad before its destruction, the shep¬ 
herd of Christ’s only true fold, the watcher 
upon the towers of Israel, raised his voice 
in warning, struck the foe with the sword of 
truth, and branded the enemy with the curse 
of anathema. 

Faith, true faith, is well worth the strug¬ 
gle which has been endured for it; for, as we 
have seen, it is the beginning of justification, 
the foundation and root of salvation. We 
have seen it exemplified in its type in the 


FAITH 


39 


Old Testament, Abraham, whom St. Paul 
praises 1 with the other great ones of the 
former dispensation: “By faith he that is 
called Abraham, obeyed to go out into a 
place which he was to receive for an in¬ 
heritance: ... by faith he abode in the 
land: . . . for he looked for a city . . . 
whose builder and maker is God: . . . for 
which cause there sprung even from one 
(and him as good as dead) as the stars of the 
heaven in multitude, and as the sand which 
is by the sea shore innumerable: ... by 
faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered 
Isaac; and he that had received the prom¬ 
ises, offered up his only begotten son . . . 
accounting that God is able to raise up even 
from the dead .” 2 Faith was back of the 
heroism of Isaac. Faith nerved the meek 
bravery of Moses to the strength which led 
the Israelites through the dangers and 
horrors of sea and desert and enemies. 
Faith steadied the greatness of Samuel and 
David and the prophets. 

And in the New Law it was faith that 

1 Cf. Heb. xi. 

2 Vv. 8-10, 12, 17, 19. 


40 


MILESTONES 


urged the chosen ones of the Master to go 
forth into all the world and proclaim His 
word to every creature. It was faith that 
steeled the hearts of martyrs and confessors 
to cast aside the fleeting greatness of this 
earth for the truer glory of the things that 
were to come. It is faith which to-day 
makes so many brave and loving souls turn 
aside from the paths whither the siren 
voice of pleasure or wordly success would 
lure them, to follow the Christ along the 
hidden road of total consecration to the 
Master and His little ones. It is faith 
which lifts up the hearts of at least some of 
God’s great ones in the world to value 
Christian honesty above crafty financiering, 
to give their Creator a worship that is not 
confined to Sunday conventionalities, to 
think more of the judgment of an all-seeing 
God than of the “don’t-get-caught” spirit 
of smug hypocrites, to refuse to coin from 
the tears and life-blood of the poor an un¬ 
worthy fortune, whilst they prate about the 
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of 
Man. 

Truly, faith is great and precious. And, 


FAITH 


41 


therefore, as we prize the cause of God and 
as we value the souls of our friends and of 
our near and dear ones, who are meant to 
be the children of God, we should pray that 
the grace of God may be welcomed by all 
who are outside of the household of the 
truth and love of God, and that they may 
come home to the true faith. 

Faith is also and ever remains the solid 
foundation on which our own higher holi¬ 
ness must be built. “And therefore/’ says 
St. Paul, “we also having so great a cloud 
of witnesses over our head,” the great ones 
of the law that has passed, “laying aside 
every weight and sin which surrounds us, 
let us run by patience to the fight proposed 
to us: looking on Jesus the author and 
finisher of faith, who having joy set before 
him, endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and now sitteth on the right hand of the 
throne of God.” 1 

Yes, let us live our faith. Let us take to 
our own inmost heart the thrilling exhorta- 

4 

tion of St. Paul, in the passage to which I 
have been referring. Have we faith ? Yes, 

iHeb. xii, 1, 2. 


42 


MILESTONES 


thank God! Then, let us show it in our 
daily lives, and in the things to which St. 
Paul exhorts as flowing from living faith, 
namely, in patience, in peace, in purity, and 
in charity. 

The trials of life with its sorrows and its 
pains may hurt. They do hurt. But, in 
the spirit of faith, back of the pain we can 
glimpse the love of a Father; and then we 
will not let poverty dwarf our souls nor 
oppression stunt our lives nor anguish kill 
our glad confidence. 

And peace? That too must be in our 
lives, peace with our brothers and sisters 
in the great family of God. And it will be, 
if faith is the lamp of our feet. Yes, and 
peace among the nations must come from 
faith. It may not be said that war, horrible 
as it is, is never justified. It is, indeed, the 
last resort in the final extremity of outraged 
justice; it is the ultimate arbiter in certain 
lamentable conditions. Yet, it is only a last 
resort; it can be appealed to only in the 
direst necessity: and such a need would 
never arise, if faith were to guide the actions 
of men and nations. The terrible, crushing 


FAITH 


43 


evils of the World War, when half the world 
was in the throes of a death struggle, when 
men had forgotten the civilization of ages 
and were revelling in the savagery of bar¬ 
barism, when bloodshed and destruction 
were wasting a continent, when the god (or 
demon) of red w r ar was rioting in the carni¬ 
val of carnage, to be followed by the gaunt 
spectre of want, reaping the harvest of sor¬ 
row and tears and desolation and broken 
hearts—all this would not have been, if all 
the nations had looked to the truths of 
Christian faith and had been true to the 
principles of the gospel of the Prince of 
Peace. 

Again, faith will make for purity, indi¬ 
vidual, domestic, and social, if it is living 
and active, as it should be. For, who would 
dishonor his body in the degradation of 
impurity, if he kept before his eyes the 
sacred truth that his very body is the temple 
of the Holy Ghost 1 and that his members 
are the members of Jesus Christ? “Shall 
I, then, take the members of Christ, and 
make them the members of a harlot ? God 

icf. I Cor. iii, 16, 17; vi, 19. 



MILESTONES 


A A 

XX 

forbid !” 1 Truly, the reign of lust is the 
revolt against the faith of Christ. 

And finally, our faith should lead to sweet 
charity. And it will, if we look through the 
eyes of faith and see in our fellows the 
brothers and sisters of Christ, at least by 
destiny. This will lead to a charity which 
is broader and deeper than mere philan¬ 
thropy; it will not only do the things of 
mercy for the children of men, but will 
spend itself for the sons and daughters of 
God; it will go beyond the healing of the 
sores of social evil, and will seek to prevent 
them, as far as this is possible in this earthly 
sojourning of mortal man. 

So, let us live a faith such as this. Then 
will it not only be for us the beginning of 
justification, the foundation and root of 
salvation; but it will lead us on, whilst we 
“ serve, pleasing God, with fear and rever¬ 
ence, ” 2 and at last it will bring us home to 
our heavenly abode. There faith will give 
place to vision, and we shall be like God, 
because we shall see Him as He is. There 

11 Cor. vi, 15. 

zHeb. xii, 28. 


FAITH 


45 


we shall thank Him that here He led us on 
by faith, whereby we saw Him darkly as in 
a glass. Yes, we shall thank Him that the 
light of our steps was the twilight of faith, 
because through the dimness w T e could show 
our confidence and our love for Him, as we 
grasped our Father’s hand in the darkness 
and travelled onward and upward to eter¬ 
nal bliss. 


CHAPTER II 


DAVID—REPENTANCE 

Recapitulation of doctrine on faith. Further ad¬ 
vance made by penance. Outline of rest of proc¬ 
ess of justification.—Nature of repentance; 
includes sorrow and detestation for sin, resolution 
of amendment. Luther’s error: its basis. Truth 
founded on revelation. Necessity of penance.— 
Penance based on faith; term to which one 
comes through fear and hope and love.—David 
as type. His career: his sin: his return to God.— 
Application: sense of sin and acknowledgment 
of our position. Lesson of ages of faith. Con¬ 
dition of to-day: hypocrisy.—Excellence of pen¬ 
ance, as preparation for sanctifying grace, as 
abiding state of soul through life. 

For the good of our souls we cannot pon¬ 
der too deeply or too often on the words of 
our blessed Savior, “Every one that exalteth 
himself, shall be humbled; and he who hum- 
bleth himself, shall be exalted.” 1 To those 
who have eyes to see, these words are ful¬ 
filled over and over again throughout the 

iLuke xiv, 11. 


46 


REPENTANCE 


47 


whole of God’s economy with man; and one 
of their truest applications is found in faith. 

By faith we bow down before the author¬ 
ity of the all-wise and all-truthful God, and 
we offer Him the homage of our dependence, 
as we cling to the truth of His revelation 
just because He has made that revelation. 
The wise fools of this earth call this attitude 
a lowering of our intellect; and in their wild 
pride they reject it. They wantonly exalt 
themselves in their fancied independence; 
and the words of Christ are fulfilled to their 
undoing: for, they are brought down to the 
dismal depths of doubt and error. Witness 
the darkness of mind and the groping ques¬ 
tionings and the pitiable mistakes and the 
childish superstition of the pagans of old: 
witness the agnosticism and atheism and 
indifferentism of so many cultured ( ?) ones 
of to-day. Contrariwise, we by faith hum¬ 
ble ourselves before our God; and lo! we are 
exalted by being lifted up to the higher 
plane of the supernatural, where our true 
home is now to be found. 

This faith, which is the first step in the 
way to life, the beginning of justification, 


48 


MILESTONES 


the foundation and root of all holiness, we 
have studied. We studied it, because we 
have taken for our consideration the prepa¬ 
ration for justification in the case of adults. 
These are either raised for the first time 
from the depths of sin into the glad day of 
God’s joy-bearing forgiveness and of the 
holiness which belongs to the children of 
God; or are brought back to God after hav¬ 
ing cast away even faith itself in their mad 
revolt of sin. For all of these, faith is the 
first step upward to God. (If faith has not 
gone down in the shipwreck of those who 
have had sanctifying grace and have lost it, 
that first step need not be taken; but the rest 
of the w r ay to God remains the same.) 

We must never lose sight of the truth that 
this faith is not, first and foremost, confi¬ 
dence in the good God, although it leads to 
this calm trust. It is not the blind clutching 
of sentiment after an unattainable some¬ 
thing that mocks it forever. It is, on the 
contrary, an intellectual assent to the truth 
of God’s word, an assent given under the 
sweet influence of divine grace which draws 
the will of man. The mind must, indeed, 


REPENTANCE 


49 


clearly see that God has spoken; and this it 
does by the signs of God’s revelation—by 
miracles and prophecy and by that standing 
miracle of His through all the ages, His only 
true Church. Then the intellect cleaves 
to God’s word with a firm assent, measured 
only by the worthiness of God Himself 
to receive the homage of our minds and 
wills. 

Faith does not dare to call God before the 
bar of human reason and make Him justify 
Himself before His puny creature. It does 
not, in the name of “sincerity” and “en¬ 
lightenment,” presume to accept only this 
revelation whilst it rejects that, because the 
one appeals to human likes and the other 
offends human dislikes. It does not babble 
the blasphemy that God’s blessed revelation 
of truth can be a “stumbling-block” in the 
way of human advance towards God. To 
do all this were to stultify itself and to dis¬ 
honor God. No, it humbly follows where 
the Master leads. 

And this is the faith which justifies. Not 
that it is itself the whole of justification and 
holiness, as if God were consciously to de- 


50 


MILESTONES 


lude Himself and call us holy whilst we 
remain defiled; hut that it is the beginning, 
which must be continued by further advan¬ 
ces along the way to life, whither God is 
calling and drawing and alluring by His 
grace—a beginning which must lead onward 
to the works prescribed by the Master, whose 
decree it is that “ without faith it is impos¬ 
sible to please God.” 1 

After recalling these truths, let us go on 
to the further stage of this true “Pilgrim’s 
Progress,” and, once again, to put the mat¬ 
ter before ourselves in a concrete shape, 
let us take an Old Testament type. David 
will be the type; and the further step to¬ 
wards justification and sanctification is 
repentance. 

This repentance, or penance, is the on¬ 
ward progress towards God. Yet, other 
Milestones must be passed before one comes 
to repentance. After explaining that sin¬ 
ners must through God’s grace conceive 
faith in the revelation of God, and especially 
in this that the impious is justified by God 
through His grace “ through the redemption, 

iHeb. xi, 6. 


REPENTANCE 


51 


which is in Christ Jesus,” 1 the Council of 
Trent further declares that “ knowing them¬ 
selves sinners . . . they are moved against 
their sins by that penance, that hatred and 
detestation of sin, which must be had before 
baptism.” 2 

So, penance is the second great advance; 
and it is itself, according to the Council, the 
outcome of holy fear of God’s judgments, 
of hope in His mercy, and of at least the 
beginning of love for Him. 

According to Biblical and ecclesiastical 
usage, repentance, or penance, means more 
than the mere retractation of a former 
frame of mind. Judas had such a retracta¬ 
tion of mind; but, in spite of all that, he did 
not truly repent of his crime of treason 
against the God-Man. Besides and beyond 
this change, it means the detestation for sins 
committed and sorrow over them, in as far 
as they are an offence against God. Fur¬ 
thermore, this repentance implies that the 
penitent wishes to offer to God such com¬ 
pensation as he may be able to give. 

1 Rom. iii, 24. 

2 Denz. n. 798. 


52 


MILESTONES 


Lactantius, the great Christian writer of 
the early ages of the Church, refers to this 
true notion of repentance when he says that 
by penance the sinner comes to his senses 
and calls back his mind from its insanity; 
that he chastises himself for his madness 
and strengthens his soul to live rightly, and 
especially takes care not to fall again into 
the same snares . 1 And St. Augustine por¬ 
trays the true notion of penitence in these 
words: “It is not enough to change one’s 
manner of living for the better and to with¬ 
draw from evil deeds, unless by the sorrow 
of repentance, by the sigh of humility, by 
the sacrifice of a contrite heart one also 
makes satisfaction to God for what he has 
done .” 2 The Council of Trent similarly 
tells us: “Contrition, which holds the first 
place among the acts of the penitent, is sor¬ 
row of soul and detestation for the sins 
committed, with the resolution of not sin¬ 
ning again.” 3 

Luther, as we know from what we con¬ 
sidered before, erroneously taught that pen- 

1 Inst. div. 1. 6, c. 24. 

2 Serm. 331, n. 12. 

3 Denz. n. 879. 


REPENTANCE 


53 


ance did not contain this sorrow, and that 
it was nothing more than another phase of 
a certain new life. False as this view is, 
it is quite in accord with the heresiarch’s 
notion of justification itself. Why, indeed, 
should one be sorry for the past, if it was the 
power of God that irresistibly moved and 
pushed him along in his evil acts as well as 
in his good ones, not as a free agent, but like 
a leaf in a whirlwind or a straw in a torrent ? 
Why should one resolve to undo the evil of 
the past by a new life, since his acts are 
always damnable sins, even after being 
covered with the justice of Christ? For, 
in the doctrine of Luther, sins they do re¬ 
main forever, although God blinds Himself 
to their heinousness and, as it were, deceives 
Himself with the appearance of His Only- 
Begotten. Why should one determine to 
keep himself clean from the foulness of sin’s 
depravity, when the only thing needed is to 
cling with confidence to the Redeemer by 
all-saving faith, which will hide the loath¬ 
someness of leper-rottenness without re¬ 
moving it? 

Repentance does include sorrow and de- 


t 


54 


MILESTONES 


testation for the sins of the past and the 
purpose to sin no more. It grieves for what 
is worthy of grief, in the way and for the 
end in which and for which this detestation 
of the past should have place. In the flush 
of passion and the forgetfulness of God, 
sin’s siren voice lured man away from God. 
But now, this very sin becomes the object of 
the soul’s horror, and the sinner says: 
“Would that I had not sinned!” This is 
not a matter of an empty velleity, which 
would impossibly attempt to undo that 
which, once done, stands as such forever 
and forever. But, it is the efficacious 
banishing from the soul of all deliberate 
affection for the evil which once wooed 
man to destruction, so that now man hates 
what once he loved and abhors what once he 
clasped to his wretched heart. Thus, on the 
one hand, man assisted by the grace of God 
offers atonement to the injured Godhead, 
and, on the other, the divine mercy will 
accept this compensation, if it is in accord¬ 
ance with the conditions fixed by His gra¬ 
cious good-pleasure, and will bring the 


REPENTANCE 55 

sinner to the peace of reconciliation and to 
the glory of the children of God. 

How do we know all this? We know it 
from the speech and on the authority of God 
Himself, who wills not the death of the sin¬ 
ner, but rather that he be converted and live. 
The revelation of God, which is seized upon 
by the loyalty of faith, lights the way 
through the void, left black and appalling 
by the glimmering of mere reason, and tells 
us that there is pardon for our offences 
against God. 

Unaided reason could do no more than 
suspect that perhaps God would forgive us 
our sins. It could not know with entire 
assurance. For, the forgiveness of sins 
depends upon the free will of Him who is 
offended; and, without a revelation from 
God Himself, we could never penetrate 
within the awful sanctuary of His outraged 
majesty. Reason could never tell us with 
certainty that there is forgiveness not only 
seven times, but until seventy times seven 
times; because reason could not assure us 
that there was for us more than one chance 


56 


MILESTONES 


and that the bolt of utter rejection might 
not fall upon us after our first act of treason. 

So, we know that God will forgive the 
sinner, if the sinner, aided by the grace of 
God, avails himself of the means appointed 
by God for the canceling of guilt. Now, 
repentance is one of these means; and it is 
an absolutely necessary one. For, as with¬ 
out faith it is impossible to please God, so 
without penance it is impossible to come 
back to God after the wandering of sin. 

Without going into the consideration of 
particular expressions of God’s will as re¬ 
vealed in Holy Scripture, it may be noted 
that, whenever God offers the forgiveness 
of sin to His recreant subjects, He demands 
repentance, or penance, as a necessary 
condition for that pardon. This is true 
throughout all His dealings with a sinful 
race. This necessity of penance is also the 
burden of countless exhortations of the 
Fathers of the Church. Thus, St. Cyprian 
says that those who are without repentance 
for their crimes close the way to satisfaction 
and atonement. 1 St. Ambrose writes to the 

i Cf. De lapsis n. 32 ff. 



REPENTANCE 


57 


Emperor Theodosius that sin is not taken 
away except through tears and penance; 
that neither angel nor archangel can cleanse 
the soul; and that God, who alone can do so, 
will not grant remission save to those who 
bring repentant souls before Him. 1 And 
Augustine exclaims: “With what a front of 
shamelessness will one wish God’s face to be 
turned away from his sins, if he does not say 
with his whole heart: ‘For I acknowledge 
my iniquity, and my sin is always before 
me’!” 2 

There can be no doubt about it, the justice 
of God exacts that at least the compensation 
of repentance be offered to His offended 
majesty. The wisdom of God will not allow 
Him to cast into the depths of divine forget¬ 
fulness the revolt which is still clung to in 
the madness of demented pride. The holi¬ 
ness of God will not let Him clasp to His 
great love the soul of one who is defiled with 
the hideous guilt of moral degradation and 
who is the willing slave of the archenemy 
of the Deity. 

iCf. Ep. 51, n. 11. 

2 Serm. 351, n. 7, referring to P». 1, 5 . 


58 


MILESTONES 


As we have seen, this repentance, which 
is unconditionally necessary for justification 
after sin, is based upon faith. It is not the 
immediate outcome of that faith; it is not 
the succeeding milestone on the way to life. 
Yet, it is the term or goal at which the sinner 
arrives before God’s sanctifying grace 
comes to him; and the successive stages by 
which it is itself reached are fear of God’s 
judgments, hope, and at least the beginning 
of love. These dispositions, by which one 
arrives at true penitence, we shall come back 
to in later reflections. Right now we must 
not pass by the pregnant words of the 
Council which point out a very necessary 
proximate preparation for repentance: 
“They (sinners) are disposed to justice, 
whilst, understanding themselves to he sin¬ 
ners , they are moved against their sins by a 
certain hatred and detestation.” x 
It is imperative that the sinner under¬ 
stand and admit and grieve over the fact 
that he is a sinner. And in this connection, 
as well as for the true portrayal of what 
repentance really is and what it does for 

iDenz. n. 798. 


BEPENTANCE 59 

the sorrowing soul, we may turn our eyes 
to the type of David. 

David 1 was of the tribe of Juda. Bethle¬ 
hem was the home of his boyhood, and there 
he guarded the flocks of Isai his father. In 
the days of his youth, when “he was ruddy 
and beautiful to behold, and of a comely 
face,” 13 he was anointed by Samuel as the 
one to whom the Lord God would give the 
government of his chosen people 3 —for, the 
Most High had rejected Saul because of his 
sins. 4 Of David’s nomad life with the 
herds, of his sojourning in the court of Saul 
until he was driven forth by the murderous 
envy and anger of the king, of his wander¬ 
ings in the desert with its dangers and its 
alarms of war, we need not speak. Nor need 
w T e dwell at length upon the glory of his 
reign as king, first at Hebron after the death 
of Saul, and then, seven years later, at Jeru¬ 
salem as king of Israel. We are not con¬ 
cerned with David the king, but with David 
the penitent. 

1 Cf. Dictionnaire Apologetique, s. v. “David.” 

2 I Kings xvi, 12. 

3 Cf. I Kings xvi, 13. 

4 Cf. I Kings xv, 26. 


60 


MILESTONES 


Rationalists and unbelievers have scarcely 
found words hard and harsh enough to hurl 
at the Prophet King. To some of them, 
like Renan, David was no more than a rob¬ 
ber, a filibuster, a bandit, a brigand of the 
worst type. With such calumniators as 
these there is and can be no question of a 
special Providence at the hands of God; 
for, they reject all thought of the supernat¬ 
ural and admit no intervention of the di¬ 
vine. 

But, David was not what they paint him. 
True, he is not to be judged according to a 
morality and a civilization more advanced 
than that of his own time. In many things, 
even apart from the evil of his sin, he is 
not to be imitated by us; because, in many 
respects, we have loftier standards and 
higher ideals than those which were before 
him. It is true, he practiced polygamy; but 
though, as our Savior said, “from the begin¬ 
ning it was not so,” 1 still it was tolerated 
for higher ends and to avoid greater evils, 
and tolerated by the only one who could jus¬ 
tify it, by the great God Himself. Yet he 

i Matt. xix, 8. 


REPENTANCE 


61 


was chaste, except in the one awful fall of 
his life. His piety was sincere and pro¬ 
found and intelligent, and not merely ex¬ 
terior and formal: he organized in Jeru¬ 
salem the public worship of God. Kind he 
was and he loved his people, who in turn 
loved him. Gratitude and fidelity to his 
plighted word shone forth in many in¬ 
stances of his life. In a word, he was a 
pious Israelite, an able captain, a great 
king. 

In the midst of all this greatness, he 
sinned mightily, and he repented heroically. 
Deep and black were the depths into which 
he fell! Off at the front, under the com¬ 
mand of Joab, were his warriors. 1 They 
were before Rabba in the bitter hardships 
of a trying siege; but, David remained in 
Jerusalem in idleness and softness. And 
hurried along in the way of passion at the 
sight of a beautiful but weak woman, and 
driven by the hot surging of fleshly lust, he 
took another man’s wife—and he sinned 
with her. And the woman was “Bethsabee 
the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Urias the 

X Cf. II Kings xi. 



62 


MILESTONES 


Hethite,” 1 who at the front was fighting 
the battles of David. 

The promptings of unholy love whipped 
the king on and crushed him down into 
lower depths of evil. For, David dis¬ 
patched orders to Joab, that Urias the Heth- 
ite should be sent to him; and upon his com¬ 
ing, the king greeted him with honeyed 
words, and, after asking for news of the 
war, sent him into his house with gifts. At 
this juncture, how the wronged Urias tow¬ 
ers in grandeur of soul above the anointed 
of the Lord! For, Urias went not into his 
house; he would have none of the comforts 
and pleasures of home, whilst his comrades 
and his leaders were hammered upon the 
anvil of adversity. “And Urias said to 
David: The ark of God and Israel and 
J uda dwell in tents, and my lord J oab and 
the servants of my lord abide upon the face 
of the earth: and shall I go into my house, 
to eat and to drink, and to sleep with my 
wife? By thy welfare and by the welfare 
of thy soul I will not do this thing.” 2 

iV. 3. 

2 V. 11. 


REPENTANCE 


63 


There spoke the hero, forgetful of self. 
Yes, without a doubt, Urias the Hethite here 
stands forth in a greatness that dwarfs the 
stature of the king of the land. 

The king spoke him fair words—and then 
took a step which was to end in the murder 
of a noble man. For, “ David wrote a let¬ 
ter to Joab: and sent it by the hand of 
Urias.” 1 And the brave man went back to 
the front carrying his own death sentence; 
for the letter said: “Set ye Urias in the 
front of the battle, where the fight is strong¬ 
est: and leave ye him, that he may be 
wounded and die.” 2 “Wherefore as Jaob 
was besieging the city, he put Urias in the 
place where he knew the bravest men were. 

. And the men coming out of the city, fought 
against Joab, and there fell some of the 
people of the servants of David, and Urias 
the Hethite was killed also.” 3 Thus, to the 
filth of adultery, the blood of murder was 
added in the crime-stained soul of Israel’s 
recreant king. 

Yes, terribly did David sin. But nobly 

iV. 14. 

2 V. 15. 

3Vv. 16, 17. 


t 


64 


MILESTONES 


did he repent; and his repentance began 
with the recognition that he was a sinner. 
The Lord God sent the prophet Nathan to 
David, and Nathan spoke thus to the sinful 
monarch: “There were two men in one 
city, the one rich, and the other poor. The 
rich man had exceeding many sheep and 
oxen. But the poor man had nothing at all 
but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought ’ 
and nourished up, and which had grown up 
in his house together with his children, eat¬ 
ing of his bread, and drinking of his cup, 
and sleeping in his bosom: and it was unto 
him as a daughter. And when a certain 
stranger was come to the rich man, he 
spared to take of his own sheep and oxen, 
to make a feast for that stranger, who was 
come to him, but took the poor man’s ewe, 
and dressed it for the man that was come to 
him. And David’s anger being exceedingly 
kindled against that man, he said to Nathan: 
As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done 
this is a child of death. He shall restore the 
ewe fourfold, because he did this thing, and 
had no pity.” 1 The parable was clear 

i II King* xii, 1-6, 


REPENTANCE 


65 


enough, though David did not as yet see 
through its transparent reference. The 
parable portrayed the evil done by the rich 
man against him who was poor and against 
the Lord God. That David could see; and, 
moved with wrath against one who would so 
ruthlessly violate rights, human and divine, 
David swore that he who had thus acted was 
worthy of death and would pay that penalty. 
But he did not recognize the miscreant as 
himself. Then it was that, in a voice which 
must have borne with it the thunders of the 
Almighty’s wrath, whilst his eyes’ flash cut 
its way through passion and selfishness 
down to the depths of the royal heart, Na¬ 
than said: “Thou art the man!” 1 And 
David understood that he was a sinner, and 
he was moved against his sin with a deep 
and whole-souled repentance. 

The voice of that sorrow has been pre¬ 
served for us in the tearful accents of the 
“Miserere,” the psalm of pleading contri¬ 
tion. “Have mercy on me, O God, accord¬ 
ing to thy great mercy. And according to 
the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out 

iV. 7. 


66 


MILESTONES 


my iniquity. Wash me yet more from my 
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For 
I know my iniquity and my sin is always 
before me. . . . Cast me not away from thy 
face; and take not thy holy spirit from 
me. . . . Deliver me from blood/’yes, from 
the blood of Urias the Hethite, “O God, thou 
God of my salvation. ... A contrite and 
humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not de¬ 
spise.” 1 

And the Lord was appeased and took 
away his sin, though temporal atonement 
had still to be offered. He took away his 
sin because of this penance, this repentance, 
which offered up the sacrifice of a contrite 
and humbled heart, bruised unto breaking. 
That repentance, like all true sorrow, was 
founded on faith and drew its strength from 
fear and hope and love; but its fountain¬ 
head was the realization of sin. David 
understood that he was a sinner. 

As was said before (and we must not lose 
sight of it), we are tracing the preparation 
for justification in the case of an adult who 
is being brought for the first time to sancti- 

iPs. 1, 1-5, 13, 16, 19. 


REPENTANCE 


67 


fying grace, as well as in the case of one who 
by casting aside even faith itself has lost 
all the supernatural gifts of God. But, this 
stage of repentance is of even wider appli¬ 
cation. Penance is the way in which all 
must be prepared for union with God by 
grace, after they have lost that grace by 
any grave sin, even without the loss of faith. 
Penance, too, is a disposition of soul which 
must permanently abide with us, if we wish 
to be true to God and to grow in that near¬ 
ness with Him which will find its perfection 
in our eternal repose in Him in heaven. 

The connection between faith and repen¬ 
tance is very, very close. It is so, because 
of the fact with which we are now engaged, 
namely, that to repent we must understand 
ourselves to be sinners. Now the knowing 
and acknowledging ourselves to be sinners 
depends largely on the influence of faith 
upon our minds and hearts. 

The sense of sin supposes that, in face of 
our transgression, we do not refuse to look 
to the rights of God. A sinner is one who 
has violated the law of God and deserves 
the displeasure and punishment of the Su- 


( 


68 


MILESTONES 


preme Lord of all. How, then, can one look 
upon himself as a sinner, if he does not give 
a thought to God and if he spurns the 
very mention of dependence upon another*? 
How can one look upon himself as a sinner, 
if he keeps out of his life every gleam of 
divine light, which is trying to pierce its 
way with saving warmth into the depths of 
his cold and frozen heart? Now, without 
God’s revelation and without faith in that 
revelation this forgetfulness may easily 
grow and this demented pride may easily 
hold man in blackest darkness. As a matter 
of fact, one of the reasons for God’s revela¬ 
tion, which calls for faith, was that with 
regard to the truths of even natural religion 
and with regard to the knowledge of God 
unaided nature was in the greatest danger 
of this forgetfulness and error. 

The pagan nations of old, in spite of all 
their intellectual achievements and in spite 
of all their sensuous splendor, show us how 
far away from religious truth and its conse¬ 
quences mankind will wander, unless God 
keeps them in the way of truth by the light 
of His revelation. Look at Rome, the best 


REPENTANCE 


69 


of the pagan races—Rome with its igno¬ 
rance and superstition and error and im¬ 
morality! Little thought of being sinners 
entered the souls of these wanderers. And 
why? Because they gave little thought to 
God and to God’s rights. And the lack of 
faith had much to do with this thoughtless¬ 
ness. 

In another and opposite way, the ages 
which by some are called the dark ages and 
by others are named the ages of faith, show 
the same truth of the effect of faith on real 
repentance. These ages of faith did not 
possess the fulness of material development 
in which our own time glories—though even 
in this respect those despised ages are not 
worthy of the obloquy cast upon them by the 
ignorant, since they are wonderful in many 
ways, unsuspected by the glib heralds of 
modern superiority. They were stained 
with many a sad tale of the fierce riot of 
savagery and brutal passion, unrefined by 
the gloss of modern civilization—though 
where that gloss and veneer went during the 
clash of arms in the World War, let the 
desolated, battle-scarred ruins of half a 


70 


MILESTONES 


world declare. Yes, the men of those times 
(many of them) sinned mightily, wildly, ri¬ 
otously in those rude old days. But then, 
too, many of them repented heroically. 
And why? Because they had not lost sight 
of the fact that this is God’s world and that 
God has His rights. Many of them were 
hot, rebellious sinners; but, much more than 
the pagans of old and much more than the 
men of later days, they were honest sinners, 
as David was. And since they knew them¬ 
selves .to be sinners, there was a chance for 
the grace of God to conquer in the strife for 
good and in the struggle for their eternal 
salvation. 

There is not so much chance for the wan¬ 
derers of modern times. These unfor¬ 
tunates, reverting to the paganism of old, 
are reaping the harvest of disaster, sown in 
the enlightened (!) times which followed 
after the days of faith. God had His all¬ 
wise and all-loving plan for remedying the 
failure of mere nature to rise to the appre¬ 
ciation and the love of God. This plan was 
to send His Only-Begotten Son, who in the 
visible charm of His adorable and lovable 


REPENTANCE 


71 


humanity would woo and win the hearts of 
mortal men. And the blessed Christ, con¬ 
tinuing the same all-wise and all-loving 
providence, left behind Him His visible 
Church to carry on His visible work by vis¬ 
ible means in favor of men who were so 
mightily helpless in face of the invisible 
and to keep them to the realization of God’s 
supreme rights. 

Such was God’s hallowed plan. But, 
senseless mortals in the folly of human 
pride tried to thwart it. They spurned the 
Church—and that meant despising the 
Christ and turning their back on the Father 
who had sent Him. The first rebels may or 
may not have envisaged the full conse¬ 
quences of their revolt. Whether they did 
or not, meant the difference of heaven or 
hell for them; but it made no difference to 
the world, whether they did or not. In any 
case, their disciples did grasp these con¬ 
sequences, and they carried their masters' 
principles to logical conclusions. 

The rejection of the Church gave place 
to the denial of Christ’s divinity—which 
is the same as the practical denial of Jesus, 


72 


MILESTONES 


since a mere man, though the paragon of 
the race, could avail nothing for mankind’s 
regeneration and salvation. From the de¬ 
nial of Christ the flood swept on to the de¬ 
nial of a personal God—and this, to the 
destruction of any solid foundation for re¬ 
sponsibility on the part of man. And so, 
with almost inevitable necessity, the so- 
called Reformation paved the way for the 
ruinous advent of deists and rationalists and 
free-thinkers and agnostics and materialists 
and pantheists and atheists. The “sense of 
sin” was as remote from men’s minds as in 
the wildest days of dissolute pagan excesses. 

Without a doubt, the sinners of to-day 
have a lesson to learn from the sinners of 
the ages of faith, as they have also a lesson 
to learn from the straightforwardness of 
the repentant David. There is no gainsay¬ 
ing the fact that to-day countless hosts of 
men do not understand and admit them-, 
selves to be sinners. And, in truth, how can 
they, so long as they hold to the principles 
or lack of principles to which they cling? 
For, once more, to admit that they are sin¬ 
ners is to look to the soul, which is placed 


REPENTANCE 73 

in wild revolt against God, and to God, who 
is scorned by sin. 

The soul and God! How many have got¬ 
ten away from all thought of a soul! There 
may be such a thing—and there may not be: 
it is not worth bothering about! And God ? 
What do unbelievers think of God, except to 
pour out the vials of their proud scorn upon 
those who, as they say, are craven enough to 
crouch in superstitious fear of the unknown, 
and base enough to try to propitiate an imag¬ 
inary over-lord of all ? What of those who 
love to call themselves broad-minded and 
tolerant and who prate about one religion 
being as good as another; who declare that 
it does not matter whether a man believes 
or what he believes; who extol a religion 
without dogmas and who talk sentimentally 
about Humanity, which they have deified, 
yet which they patronize with lordly air? 
What of those who do admit a God, but who 
consider it a condescension on their part, if 
they do aught unto His reverence or serv¬ 
ice? How, in heaven’s name can men such 
as these recognize themselves as sinners as 
they go against the commands of the Al- 


74 


MILESTONES 


mighty ? and how, then, can there be question 
of their repentance? 

If men will sin, to their temporal and 
(unless they repent) their eternal undoing, 
would to God that they were honest! Then 
the dear Lord would have some chance with 
them. But, when they close their eyes to 
their own deformity; when they deceive 
themselves with a specious glossing over of 
exterior respectability; nay, when they go 
so far as to endeavor to justify their evil 
ways—there is hardly a hope for them to 
recognize themselves to be sinners, and thus 
to take a step towards a return to God. 

The hypocrites! Hypocrites ? What 
else are they, if they will proclaim “ liberty, 
equality, and fraternity,” if they will embla¬ 
zon it upon their banners and carve it upon 
their buildings, and then use it as a cloak to 
refuse to God Himself even an equality with 
men, to steal and plunder the lawful pos¬ 
sessions of ages, and to persecute the dis¬ 
ciples of Christ? 

Hypocrites? Why, they will preach to 
even unwilling ears the freedom of the press, 
and then they will turn that freedom into 


REPENTANCE 


75 


license by spreading over the land calum¬ 
nious lies, conceived with the hatred of hell 
and defiled with the obscenity of moral cess¬ 
pools. They will parade before men a 
patriotism which boasts itself ready to do 
and to suffer all for the Constitution of the 
country, and then they will violate that Con¬ 
stitution by striking at its root principles 
of religious and civil liberty. 

Hypocrites ? They will wax eloquent 
over the undeserved wrongs of one who has 
made a mistake in a life partner and 
over the unhappiness which must be faced 
through long years, made longer by a misery 
too heavy to be borne; and then they will 
plead for that freedom which would undo 
the bonds of Christian society itself. They 
will grow indignant at the intolerance which 
would dare to stand between a man and a 
woman, whom God has not joined together, 
but between whom He stands by His un¬ 
compromising law; they will fiercely claim 
the right of each and every one to lead his 
or her own life and to get out of existence 
all the sweetness that may be forced from 
it, regardless of what they are pleased to 


76 


MILESTONES 


call “conventions” :—and it is all a trick, 
to hide the orgies of unrestrained licen¬ 
tiousness and the vileness of lustful indul¬ 
gence, masquerading under the sacred name 
of love. 

Hypocrites? How many will refuse to 
give to men and women a wage sufficient for 
maintenance as human beings, and will 
drive and goad them until they lose almost 
all traits of humanity and sink down to the 
dreary, hopeless monotony of machines, 
which must grind fortunes out of the very 
life-blood and heart-throbs and soul-aches 
and body-dwarfing of broken wretches! 
This they will do; and then they will smugly 
give of their tainted abundance to relieve 
the very misery for which they are largely 
responsible; and, as they give, they will 
warm their hearts with the thought of their 
good will towards men and their love for 
the little ones of Christ! 

Hypocrites? How many are there (and 
God grant that we ourselves be not of the 
number!), how many are there who will try 
to excuse themselves from the evil of sin 
and endeavor to smother the reproaches 


REPENTANCE 


77 


of a remorseful conscience by looking for 
reasons to justify their transgressions! 
They blind themselves to the harsh truth 
that they are wretched weaklings and mean 
ingrates, and, though in the depths of their 
hearts they know that they are liars against 
themselves and against God, they minimize 
and palliate and condone and excuse. Nay, 
they may go so far as to drag others down 
to their own level, lest the lives of these be 
a reproach to themselves in the ways of sin. 

Truly, we may well repeat the wish: 
Would that men would not sin against God! 
but, if they sin, would to God that they 
would be honest and would understand 
themselves to be sinners! If they will not, 
there is no place for the beginning of repent¬ 
ance. If they will not, it may take the 
stroke of death and the lightning flash of 
divine judgment to thunder into their dead¬ 
ened souls, killed forever then, the ter¬ 
rible truth: “Thou art the man.” 

With faith, then, and with this realization 
that he is a sinner the way lies open to a man 
to come to God through penance. Fear of 
God’s just judgments may then work its 


78 


MILESTONES 


salutary effect in his trembling spirit; hope 
in the mercy of the all-good One who has 
promised His forgiveness to the contrite 
and humble of heart will lift his soul up to 
better things; and love, at least the begin¬ 
ning of it, will complete the work of prep¬ 
aration, as the sinner comes to true repent¬ 
ance. 

Sin should be the object of shrinking 
horror for a host of reasons. It is vile and 
loathsome by its very nature and entirely 
out of joint with the order established by 
God in His fair creation. Besides, it is an 
act of utter disobedience, the puny creature 
against the almighty Creator. It is dis¬ 
loyalty to the best of sovereigns and open 
rebellion in the presence of the Lawgiver. 
It is rank ingratitude to the best of friends 
and the most munificent of benefactors. 
Worst of all, it is proud defiance and bitter 
attack upon the very Godhead. Now, the 
realization of this unspeakable horror of 
sin, joined with the other motives of the 
dread of the doom to pain and to the loss of 
heaven, as well as of those appeals to what 
is nobler still, will tear the soul away from 


REPENTANCE 


79 


adhesion to evil and will bring it to a sorrow 
and detestation of the past. To this sorrow 
will be added the firm resolution never again 
to stand out against the good God; and the 
heart will be strengthened to offer the aton¬ 
ing compensation of repentance to the 
offended majesty of the Eternal. 

Then comes the sacred sacrament of Bap¬ 
tism, if there is question of the first union 
with God, or of the sweet pardoning of 
Penance, if it be a case of a renewed return 
to our Father; and the great Lover of man¬ 
kind sweeps the soul within the embrace of 
His love and clothes it with grace, the glo¬ 
rious raiment of the children of God. In 
this manner is justification brought to the 
soul of the sinner, unless indeed the love 
which animates repentance is not merely 
the beginning of love, but the full, white-hot 
flame of perfect charity, which burns away 
the malice of sin. For then, even before 
the waters of Baptism have cleansed the 
soul or the hallowing of absolution has 
washed it from its stain, the child of God is 
united to his Father; though the sacrament 
must still be received, since it is not without 


80 


MILESTONES 


reference to its blessed power that holiness 
has been conferred. 

Furthermore, as penance is the disposi¬ 
tion which prepares the heaxt for sanctifi¬ 
cation after sin, so should it be the perma¬ 
nent state of our souls through life. We 
are not, indeed, to be forever coming back 
upon ourselves in over-anxious dread of the 
past; because that would be unfair to the 
loving forgiveness of our God. But, we 
should always bravely face the fact that we 
have sinned. That fact remains, and it will 
remain unto the endless aeons of eternity. 

The remembrance of our revolt against 
God will help to keep us humble, as we 
should be. When the tempter calls us to 
follow after the urging of passion through 
the ways of wanton revolt, it will be an aid 
to us and will strengthen us with the saving 
thought that we have, God knows! sinned 
enough already. It will make us sanely 
distrust ourselves and will keep us from 
rushing in like fools where angels fear to 
tread; it may force us to cry out in the face 
of spiritual death: “Lord, save us, we 


REPENTANCE 


81 


perish.” 1 It will be a comfort to ns in the 
adversity of bitter sorrow, whereby we can 
make up to God for our debt of atonement to 
divine justice. It will help to arouse 
within us some of the apostolic spirit which 
glows in the heart of every true lover of the 
Crucified, and will urge us to do what we can 
by example, by timely word, and by prayer 
to bring back to the loving Christ the strayed 
ones whom He sought even unto the dire bit¬ 
terness of Calvary. It will encourage us to 
bring even material assistance to those who 
are so ground down by the hard injustice 
of men, that they have not learned to look 
up to the love of a fond Father; who are so 
helplessly struggling with the meanness of 
earth, that they do not believe in the sweet¬ 
ness of a blissful heaven; or who are so 
blinded by the blackness of a night without 
a gleam of solace, that they do not conceive 
of the bright sunlight of the day of God’s 
love. 

And thus penance will be for us, not 
indeed the way to the first reception of the 

i Matt, viii, 25. 


82 


MILESTONES 


soul’s true life, though it is that for the 
adult sinner who first conies to sanctifying 
grace (for, this life came to most of us in 
the hour of unconscious childhood, without 
any preparation on our part) ; but, if we 
have ever sinned, it will be the plank after 
shipwreck, according to the conditions fixed 
by Christ—and then it will remain the 
secure means of never again wandering 
away from God. 

So, let us clasp the spirit of penance to 
our heart of hearts. For, even after the 
grace of Baptism, there are only two ways 
to heaven; and these are the way of inno¬ 
cence and the way of penance. If we have 
not kept the first way, let us follow the 
second and never stray from it. It will lead 
us home. 


CHAPTER III 


ELEAZAR—FEAR 

Fear a disagreeable thing. Fear, even of God, a 
hateful thing to many; yet it is sacred.—Inter¬ 
mediate stages between faith and penance: re¬ 
ducible to fear, hope, love. First of these, object 
of present inquiry.—Nature of fear and its value. 
Is strong call to goodness. Luther’s error. 
Humble faith fears God’s judgments. Vain rea¬ 
sons for denial of punishment.—Fear of God, 
holy and salutary: Old Testament commendation; 
New Testament lessons.—Kinds of fear: fear of 
slave; of servant of God; of child of Father. 
Value of each.—Effect of holy fear; Eleazar a 
type. Persecution against Jews: Eleazar a vic¬ 
tim: his ordeal and his triumph. His fortitude 
mothered by holy fear.—Application: many do 
not fear God and do fear men: examples. 

The subject with which we are to deal at 
this point of our considerations is one which 
has become particularly unpopular in these 
days of exaggerated self-appreciation. We 
are to reflect upon fear, the fear of God’s 
just judgments. 


83 


84 


MILESTONES 


Fear is almost always a disagreeable 
thing; and to be told that one is afraid is 
looked upon as a challenge to one’s nobility 
of nature and as an insult to one’s dignity. 
The dread of appearing to be afraid is like 
a lash to childhood; and boys will exult in 
such games as “follow the leader” just be¬ 
cause they w T ould prove their bravery, as 
they will expose limb and life itself rather 
than be written down among those who will 
“take a dare.” And as they grow in years 
through youth to manhood, they still cling 
tenaciously to the cherished thought of their 
courage and indignantly resent any insin¬ 
uation against it: they will not have it said 
that they are “afraid.” They applaud in 
their inmost heart the statement of the old 
Roman who said: “I had as lief not be as 
live to be in dread of such a thing as I my¬ 
self” or of others like to me. 

There is no need to find fault with this 
sentiment, so long as it confines itself to 
one’s attitude towards one’s fellowmen. It 
is only when by a foolish, or tragic, ex¬ 
aggeration it would stand up against God 
that it is worthy of pity and condemnation. 


FEAR 


85 


For, if not to fear men is a mark of great¬ 
ness of soul, to refuse to fear God is a sign 
of folly and of mad pride. Yet, it is but too 
sadly true that pride has so puffed up the 
minds of some that they deem it unworthy 
of their fancied greatness to stand in fear 
even of God Himself. 

They bombastically keep the dread of God 
out of their shallow lives. And it is very 
easy for them to do so, since they have 
banished God from His own universe and 
have 4 ‘put out the stars of heaven.” As a 
consequence, they rush forward on their 
unrepentant way to the perdition which lies 
at the end of their mad career. 

In the preceding chapters, in studying 
the process through which justification is 
reached by adults who have never had the 
grace of God or who, having had it, have 
lost all supernatural endowments by forfeit¬ 
ing faith itself, we have considered the path 
along which God leads them to life divine. 
First and foremost comes faith, as the be¬ 
ginning of justification and the foundation 
and root of all sanctification. Then, when 
the sinner, thus placed in relation to his 


86 


MILESTONES 


supernatural destiny, comes to realize that 
he is a sinner, he is moved by the grace of 
God to the sad, yet sweet, disposition of true 
repentance for his transgressions. 

This repentance is the last preparation 
for the reception of the sanctifying grace of 
God, either through the sacrament of Bap¬ 
tism or of Penance, or, in the case of perfect 
repentance through charity, by the imme¬ 
diate inpouring of the life of the soul. Yet 
repentance does not at once blossom forth 
from the root of faith. There are inter¬ 
mediate stages. 

As the Council of Trent tells us in the dec¬ 
laration which is our guide in our study, 
we come to repentance through fear of God’s 
judgments, through hope in His mercy, and 
through at least the beginning of love. In 
fact, since repentance or penance or contri¬ 
tion (different names for the same thing) 
is the soul’s sorrow and hatred for sin as an 
offence against God, joined with the resolve 
never to sin again, it may be motived by 
many virtues. But all of these motives, 
though at first glance apparently quite di¬ 
verse, may be reduced to two classes, namely, 


FEAR 87 

the goodness of God in Himself, and our 
own true good. 

We may hate sin because of the penalty 
attached to it, “ because by it we have de¬ 
served the loss of heaven and the pains of 
hell”; 1 and then our repentance proceeds 
either from hope or from fear. Or we may 
detest it because of the evil of transgression 
against God; and if we abhor the transgres¬ 
sion as an offence against the goodness of 
God in His blessed self, the source of our 
repentance is charity for God. The three 
big motives, then, from which salutary re¬ 
pentance springs are these: fear and hope 
and love. Let us at present deal with the 
first of these—with fear, which does lead to 
repentance. 

For fear is not only the “ beginning of 
wisdom” 2 which is based on faith; it is the 
beginning of that return to one’s right 
senses which is found in true repentance. 
Fear, as we know and as St. Thomas 3 so 
accurately analyzed it, is the dread and 
hatred of some evil which is impending and 

1 Act of contrition. 

2 Pb. cx, 10. 

8 Cf. 2, 2, q. 19, a. 1. 



88 


MILESTONES 


is hard to avoid. Apprehension and trep¬ 
idation of soul awake in face of the evil 
and flight from it arises because of its im¬ 
minence. We are not really afraid of some¬ 
thing which is quite easily avoided; nor are 
we truly in fear of a thing which is in no 
way likely to affect us. We may, indeed, 
say that we are afraid, say, of cyclones; hut 
we do not, as a matter of fact, fear them 
unless they are impending and are threaten¬ 
ing us. Thus, we do not fear a tornado 
which will come five centuries from now, 
nor do we stand in dread of a hurricane in 
Timbuctoo. 

Now, fear in relation to repentance draws 
back from the evil which is impending and 
which is hard of avoidance. The evil in the 
case is sin, as an offence against God: and 
so, fear may have a twofold object. It may 
stand face to face either with the evil itself, 
which is sin, or with the person with regard 
to whom sin is evil, namely, God Himself, 
who is the Last End from whom we go away 
through transgression and the author of the 
penalties which He inflicts because of 
sin. 


FEAR 


89 


Yes, the fear of the just judgments of 
God, and most especially the dread of the 
awful penalty of hell, is a strong power 
dragging the sinner’s broken will back from 
its revolt and up to God, who is merciful 
even in His threats of justice. This fear is 
good and salutary, when it positively ex¬ 
cludes, as it can and generally does, any and 
all deliberate affection for sin. 

And why not, indeed ? By such fear one 
judges that the punishment for transgres¬ 
sion is such that a sane man should avoid it. 
And this judgment is right. By such fear 
a man recoils from the evil of penalty: and 
to do so is to love himself with that well 
ordered love which he may and should have 
for himself. By such fear, too, a man may 
come to the point where, forgetting his little 
self, he is so engrossed in God’s lovable mag¬ 
nificence, that through love he dreads the 
loss of his Supreme Good. 

With clear insight into man’s needs and 
into God’s rights the Fathers of the Church 
correctly judged the worth of this fear as 
a motive for repentance. St. Chrysostom 
may speak for the rest. In his homilies to 


90 


MILESTONES 


the people of Antioch he says: “What is 
more terrible than hell? Yet nothing is 
more useful than the fear of it; for the fear 
of hell brings us the crown of the king¬ 
dom. ... If fear were not a goodly thing, 
Christ would not have uttered many and 
long discourses, as He spoke about the 
penalty and the torment w 7 hich were to 
come.” 1 

In fact, the wonder is that men should 
ever have been foolish enough to doubt the 
efficacy and the worth of fear, since the 
blessed Lord so often placed it as a motive 
before the wanderers whom He sought to 
reclaim. 

We saw in the foregoing chapters how 
Luther fell into error with regard to faith 
and with regard to repentance. In the mat¬ 
ter of the influence of fear, as bringing one 
to repentance, he strayed again from the 
pathway of truth. According to him, the 
contrition which arises from the considera¬ 
tion of the pains of hell makes men hypo¬ 
crites and deeper sinners than they were 

iHom. 15, nn. 1, 2. 



FEAR 


91 


before. 1 He says that such fear forces the 
will to hate evil, even though it does not 
wish to hate it—a peculiarly inconsistent 
remark from Luther, for whom every act 
of the will is forced, since it is without free¬ 
dom. Error finds it hard to be consistent 
with itself. 

True it is, that there is a fear which may 
coexist with evil and which does not at all 
exclude deliberate affection for sin. This 
we shall presently see, when we consider the 
different kinds of fear which may motive 
repentance. But there is a fear which tears 
the soul away from evil and leads it back 
humbled and bruised with contrition to the 
feet of God. 

The denial of fear as a worthy motive is 
not restricted to those who have gone before 
and who have met their judge. To-day also 
we find only too many who will not hear of 
it with patience. In the imagined superi¬ 
ority of their fancied wisdom many have 
come to deny that there are such penalties 
for sin as may well shake the stoutest 
hearts. 


iCf. Denz. nn. 746, 818, 915. 


92 


MILESTONES 


Some of these men do not fear God be¬ 
cause they scorn Him. In fact, it is a re¬ 
markable thing that the fear of God’s judg¬ 
ments is to a great extent proportioned to 
the spirit of faith which actuates men, or, 
at least, to the strength of the realization 
of the truths revealed by God. The humble 
faithful ones of God fear Him; but the 
wise (*?) scoffers disdainfully dismiss all 
thought of hell, which stands as an awful 
warning against sin and as a terrible call to 
repentance and to the service of God. They 
put it aside with a smile of condescension 
at the puerile superstition of those who are 
affected by it. They know more about the 
hereafter than does the great Lord and 
Master of all! They deny a hell in the face 
of the assertion of the God who made that 
hell, and they plume themselves upon their 
advancement and enlightenment, upon their 
scientific attainments and upon the breadth 
of their intelligence. Poor deluded wise 
ones! 

Others again cannot be touched by the 
fear of such a punishment as that of hell, 
not because it is not terrible enough to strike 


FEAR 


98 


consternation into any but the utterly 
thoughtless and indifferent, but because they 
have made for themselves such a picture of 
the goodness of God as to do away with His 
justice. They speak feelingly and elo¬ 
quently of the love of the Father in heaven. 
This all-embracing love of God cannot be 
extolled too much; but it must be lauded as 
the Christ praised it. Yet they make of 
God either a careless egotist, who does not 
care for the service of the work of His 
hands, or a sentimental weakling, who is so 
softly caressing as not to be able to strike 
the hardened rebel. 

So, the first group of these wiseacres deny 
the punishments inflicted by God, because 
they imagine themselves too great to be 
punished; and the others deny them, because 
they picture God as too good to punish. 
And both are wrong. 

The fear of the penalties which God 
threatens against sin is worthy of man and 
leads to God. From end to end the Old 
Testament is filled with commendations of 
this sacred fear of God and of His judg¬ 
ments. Thus, we are told, the fear of the 


94 


MILESTONES 


Lord is the beginning of wisdom/ as it is 
its crown; 2 nay, it is wisdom itself. 3 “ The 

fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.” 4 
“The fear of the Lord driveth out sin”; 5 
it “is the glory of the rich, and of the 
honorable, and of the poor”; 6 it “is like a 
paradise of blessing”; 7 through it one keeps 
away from all that is unworthy, because 
“the fear of the Lord hateth evil.” 8 The 
good are praised and declared blessed be¬ 
cause of it: “Blessed are all they that fear 
the Lord: that walk in his ways”; 9 the 
wicked are proclaimed to be such because 
they will not let its sacred influence reach 
their hearts. 10 Nay, it sums up the entire 
life of a servant of God; for Ecclesiastes 
says: “Fear God, and keep his command¬ 
ments: for this is all man.” 11 

And in the New Testament, which is the 
covenant of love, fear of God’s just judg¬ 
ments, far from being passed by, is insisted 


1 Prov. i, 7. 

2 Ecclus. i, 22. 

3 Job xxviii, 28. 

4 Prov. xiv, 27. 
s Ecclus. i, 27. 
e Id. x, 25. 


7 Id. xl, 28. 
s Prov. viii, 13. 

9 Ps. cxxvii, 1. 

10 Ps. xiii, 3; x Heb.), 5. 
nEccles. xii, 13. 


FEAR 


95 


on with unmistakable emphasis. St. John 
the Baptist, the Precursor of the Savior, 
urged this motive on the sinners who came 
out from the towns and cities, from the 
shops, from the barracks, from the temple 
to hearken to his words of burning appeal. 
To the hypocritical Pharisees and the sen¬ 
sualist Sadducees he said: “Ye brood of 
vipers, who hath showed you to flee from 
the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore 
fruit worthy of penance. . . . For now the 
axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every 
tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit, 
shall be cut down, and cast into the 
tire. ’ ’ 1 

The dear merciful Christ Himself did 
not pass by the appeal to the heart which 
comes from holy fear. Let the sentimental¬ 
ists note it well—He preached the terrible 
doctrine of hell as a call to penance and a 
warning to godly living. He said: “And 
if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is 
better for thee to enter into life, maimed, 
than having two hands to go into hell, into 

iMatt. iii, 7, 8, 10. 


96 


MILESTONES 


unquenchable fire: where their worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not extinguished. And 
if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off. It is 
better for thee to enter lame into life ever¬ 
lasting, than having two feet, to be cast into 
the hell of unquenchable fire: where their 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not extin¬ 
guished. And if thy eye scandalize thee, 
pluck it out. It is better for thee with one 
eye to enter into the kingdom of God, than 
having two eyes to be cast into the hell of 
unquenchable fire: where their worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not extinguished. ” 1 
Stern, yet merciful, words! The Master 
tells us that, if a person or a thing be as 
near and as dear to us, and apparently as 
necessary to us, as a hand or a foot or an eye, 
yet is an occasion of evil to us, we must tear 
it away or cut it away, though the pain be 
like that caused by the loss of a member of 
the body. We must do this, lest we fall into 
“the hell of unquenchable fire.” And after 
each of the Savior’s warnings comes the 
refrain, like the deep-toned tolling of a fu- 

* Mark ix, 42-47. 


FEAR 97 

neral knell, “ Where the fire is not extin¬ 
guished.” 

Again, in a few words He sums up the 
sentence of condemnation upon the repro¬ 
bate at the judgment seat of God’s justice; 
and these few words enfold more unutter¬ 
able terror than is contained in all the 
efforts of fancy to grasp the excruciating 
anguish of dereliction: “Depart from me, 
you cursed, into everlasting fire. ’ ’ 1 

In view of these utterances, His story of 
Lazarus and Dives takes on a heart-crush¬ 
ing significance. 2 Buried in hell after a 
life of unrestrained indulgence, the rich 
man looks up to Lazarus reposing in peace 
and joy in “Abraham’s bosom” and across 
the “great chaos” that is fixed between 
them he sends up his piercing plea for some 
solace; “for,” he says, “I am tormented 
in this flame.” 3 Yet there is no easing of 
his torture forevermore. 

Let us never forget that these are the 
teachings of the gentle Jesus, who as our 

1 Matt, xxv, 41. 

2 Luke xvi, 19-26. 

s V. 24. 


98 


MILESTONES 


Brother toiled for His dear ones and who 
as our High Priest offered Himself in sacri¬ 
fice for His wandering loved ones. It is 
He Himself who, as the Judge of all man¬ 
kind, will speak the terrible words, “ Depart 
from me, you cursed, ” to those who have cast 
Him off utterly. It is He Himself who will 
banish them into the dungeons of torment 
which He, the just God, has made as the 
prison of His wrath. No wonder, then, 
that He should say: “Fear ye not them 
that kill the body, and are not able to kill 
the soul: but rather fear him,” God, Christ 
the Judge, “that can destroy body and soul 
in hell.” 1 

If, then, God Himself can and does put 
before us the holy fear of His just judg¬ 
ments as a motive for repentance and for 
subsequent upright living, such a fear is 
without question good and salutary. 

There are, indeed, different kinds of fear; 
and not all of them are good. First of all, 
there is a fear which is technically called 
“servilely servile.” This is nothing more 
nor less than an added sin. In this fear the 

i Matt, x, 28. 


PEAR 


99 


sinner has no thought of God, and he 
embraces and clings to sin in his imagined 
flight from it. This fear not only does not 
include the smallest vestige of the love of 
God; but it positively excludes such love. 
It holds back, or pretends to hold back, from 
the guilt of a forbidden action simply and 
solely and exclusively because of the penalty 
attached, in such sort that it has no regard 
for anything whatsoever except the penalty. 
By so doing the soul makes its own little self 
its last end, instead of gazing up to God as 
its last end. In this connection St. Augus¬ 
tine says: “It is one thing to do good 
through the desire of well-doing,’’ even 
though this desire be aroused by the thought 
of the penalties attached to the opposite 
course; “and it is quite another thing to be 
so inclined to evil-doing that one would do 
it, if he could with impunity. For thus 
assuredly in the depths of his will he sins 
who refrains from sin, not because he wills 
to, but solely because .he fears” 1 for himself. 

Such unworthy fear is surely that of a 
base slave who is whipped to his task, whilst 

i Contra dua» ep. Pelag. 1. 1, c. 9, n. 15. 


100 


MILESTONES 


his heart holds hatred for his master. A 
fear like this is not according to God; for 
God will have no slaves in His Kingdom, 
though He does will to have the loyalty of 
faithful servants. 

Quite different from the base and sinful 
fear of a selfish and cowardly slave is the 
fear of a servant of God. This servant of 
the Most High may detest his sin, not indeed 
precisely because of the fault of trans¬ 
gression, but because of the appalling pun¬ 
ishments which God threatens to those who 
violate His commandments. In this case 
the will first of all shrinks back from the 
punishment; yet it does not stop there. 
Because of this punishment, it abhors the 
guilt of sin as well. It does not, it is true, 
look to God before all else; yet it does not 
turn its back upon Him, whilst in the hid¬ 
den depths of its affection it clings doggedly 
to the transgression. It deems hell an im¬ 
mense and terrible evil, which it may and 
ought to fly from; but it does not esteem 
hell as something more evil than an offence 
against the majesty of the great God. It 
considers the penalty as a grievous harm to 


FEAR 


101 


itself; but it does not place itself as its own 
end and it does not in the folly of personal 
idolatry worship itself as a god. 

Besides, fear such as this, without ceasing 
to be fear, may by heaven’s help be changed 
into an act of real love for God, in the spirit 
of a child who looks up to his heavenly 
Father. It does not forever crouch and 
cower and slink away from before the face 
of a Master, whom it does not and will not 
love. 

And then, too, there is a fear which may 
mount to the very heights of divine love. 
By it one fears the guilt of transgression 
rather than the penalty itself. It is still 
fear, though shot through with love. For, 
the strongest fear is that which dreads to 
lose the love of the beloved; and the holiest 
fear is that of children who prize above all 
the favor of their father. By fear such as 
this the child of God raises his eyes and his 
heart to his Father who is in heaven. It 
may be based upon the love of hope for the 
good things which are in the Father’s keep¬ 
ing. It may even get away from the thought 
of self, and, resting in the consideration of 


102 


MILESTONES 


the transcendent goodness of that Father 
in Himself, it may partake of the sacred¬ 
ness of blessed charity. 

But, even if it does not mount so high, 
fear, whether it be the fear of servants or 
the fear of children of God, is holy and 
salutary. If it does not include an act of 
love—and it need not—it does not exclude 
it. If it is not the most perfect of motives— 
and it is not—it is a motive which is good 
and sacred. 

We need not, in fact, expect more from 
our weak and wavering wills than is ex¬ 
pected from us by the Father who knows 
the clay of which we are wrought. And 
so, even though the spirit of fear is not 
always the spirit of the heroes of God (and 
fear is in them too), still let us who are not 
heroes hesitate to scorn it. Although love 
is the greatest of all incentives to nobility 
of conduct and to achievements which gleam 
with the splendor of the sublime, let us not 
for that reason belittle the value of holy 
fear, which may whip us back into line when 
we have strayed away from the path of our 
duty. 



FEAR 


103 


Thus, sorrow which arises from the fear 
of God’s just judgments is a blessed sorrow. 
With it the sinner is prepared for the re¬ 
ception of sanctifying grace through the 
sacrament of Baptism or, for his later falls, 
through the sacrament of Penance; and it 
may pass into that holier repentance which 
flows forth from the perfect love of God 
and which justifies even before the sacra¬ 
ment has wrought holiness through the 
power of Christ. 

It is well worthy of remark at this period 
of our considerations that fear not only has 
a part in bringing us to repentance and 
through it to sanctification, but that it has 
a sturdy power to keep us true to God 
throughout life. For this reason it is worth 
our while to nourish it within our souls all 
through our days. Let us love God; for 
we can never love Him enough. But let 
us never forget that He is our Lord and 
Master, whom we must reverence and fear. 
If it is true that “fear is not in charity: 
but perfect charity casteth out fear, because 
fear hath pain, ’ ’ 1 this is true only of that 

11 John iv, 18. 


104 


MILESTONES 


fear which does not rise to the height of 
filial reverence. The fear which dreads the 
displeasure of the loving and beloved Father 
must grow with the love which is its very 
soul. 

And whom shall we put before ourselves 
to typify this holy fear of God? It may 
be hard to choose among its many exem¬ 
plars. Every one of God’s holy ones had 
this sacred fear within his heart and nour¬ 
ished the fires of love with it. Even in the 
New Dispensation of love every saint had 
it; every holy one of the Old Testament was 
filled with its saving spirit. Yes, it is hard 
to choose; yet, still looking to the he¬ 
roes of the Old Law, we may select the noble 
old man Eleazar. He will show us some of 
the effects of this holy fear of God in keep¬ 
ing the soul true to God and to His blessed 
will. 1 

About the year 167 b. c. the Syrian mon¬ 
arch Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, began 
a fierce persecution against the people of 
God and struck at the sacred religious rites 

i II Mach, vi, 18-31. 


FEAR 


105 


of Israel. 1 He had profaned the temple, 
so dear to every Hebrew heart. He com¬ 
manded all to depart from the ways of their 
fathers and to desert the law of Jahve. In 
consequence of his onslaughts against them, 
in Jerusalem idolatry was rampant; an idol 
was set up on the very altar of the Most 
High, and the temple was changed from the 
house of God into a shrine of Jupiter Olym- 
pius. Within the hallowed precincts of the 
shrine wild revelling and lewdness rioted. 
The ceremonial rites were banned; the holy 
books were burned; the Jews were com¬ 
manded to eat the meats which were forbid¬ 
den by the law of God. 

It was a question of choice between death 
or exile on the one hand and duty on the 
other, between conscience and apostasy. 
And, says the Holy Scripture, “many of the 
people were gathered to them that had for¬ 
saken the law of the Lord: and they com¬ 
mitted evils of the land.” 2 Yet in Jeru¬ 
salem itself and in other cities of the Holy 
Land some were still true to God. 

1 Cf. I Mach, i, 11 ff. 

2 V, 55. 


106 


MILESTONES 


On to Antioch the red tide of persecution 
swept; and it was probably there, in Anti¬ 
och, that the hostile attack made a victim 
of the brave old man Eleazar. He was a 
venerable man well advanced in age. The 
weight of ninety years was upon his bent 
shoulders; yet he bore himself well and was 
“of a comely countenance.’ 71 Honorable 
he was in the community, and was chief of 
the scribes of the law. And now in the 
evening of his days he was forced to a con¬ 
flict with the powers of evil. He was called 
to stand forth as the champion of right and 
the defender of his religion. 

The minions of the king came to him and 
commanded him to eat forbidden meats and 
thus to despise the Jewish law. He bravely 
refused to do so. Then they forced the 
meat into his mouth, and tried to cow him 
with threats of torment. But he spat forth 
the hated morsel, and “choosing rather a 
most glorious death than a hateful life, went 
forward voluntarily to the torment.” 2 He 
did not say to himself, as some of the 

1 II Mach, vi, 18. 

2 V. 19. 


FEAR 


107 


wiser ( ?) ones of to-day would have done, 
that it was only a matter of eating a piece 
of meat and having done with the affair, 
that a man is more than his food, and that 
he had his life to lead. Not he. He saw 
that there was question of being true to 
duty or recreant to it, of obeying or of vio¬ 
lating a commandment which bore the sanc¬ 
tion of God Himself. 

With unshaken finality he chose suffering 
rather than disloyalty to religion and to 
God. His steps may have faltered, as he 
bent them towards the place of torment, but 
his spirit did not; and those who stood by 
marvelled at his courage. Moved by their 
old friendship for the man, they took him 
aside—perhaps from the presence of Anti- 
ochus, whom Josephus (though we know 
not upon what warrant) supposes to have 
been present. In their “wicked pity” 1 for 
him they then subjected him to another 
trial—an insidious one, masked under the 
appearance of lawfulness and beneath the 
smiling front of deceptive friendship. 
They would, they said, have meats brought 
l v. 21 . 



108 


MILESTONES 


which had not been offered in sacrifice to 
false gods and which were allowed by the 
Jewish code. Let him eat of these, and then 
pretend that he had eaten of the flesh of the 
sacrifice, as the king commanded that he 
should. 

But the brave old warrior of God saw 
through the snare—and he rejected the pro¬ 
posal. He would not defile “the dignity of 
his age and his ancient years and the in- 
bred honor of his gray head and his good 
life and conversation from a child: and he 
answered without delay, according to the 
ordinances of the holy law made by God, 
saying that he would rather be sent into the 
other world. ’ ’ 1 He would not dissemble 
and be the occasion of grievous scandal to 
others, who through his supposed desertion 
from duty might be led away into infidelity. 
No, he would not bring this stain and curse 
upon his old age. 

And his motive? For, let us remember, 
this valiant hero serves us as a type. His 
motive? Let us listen to his words. His 
bright eyes must have flashed and his 

i V. 23. 



FEAR 


109 


stooped form must have straightened to the 
stature of compelling dignity, as he told 
them that he would not be untrue to his God. 
“For though,” he said, “for the present 
time, I should be delivered from the punish¬ 
ments of men, yet should I not escape the 
hand of the Almighty neither alive nor 
dead .” 1 Because he feared his God, he 
would not offend Him. 

His words sealed his doom. He was led 
forth to execution; and his former friends 
were turned into fiercer persecutors, as their 
craven spirits cringed beneath the lash of 
his noble words. They would wreak stern 
justice and vengeance upon him for his arro¬ 
gance. 

Death did not come in one swift stroke 
of the flashing sword. It came with slow 
and torturing steps behind the stinging, 
bruising, cutting blows of rods and scourges. 
Yes, they beat him to death. We need not 
try to visualize the horrid scene, as blow 
after blow rained down upon the broken 
frame of the venerable victim. But, well 
indeed may we approach as his end draws 

iV. 26. 


110 


MILESTONES 


nigli and listen to the faltering accents 
which sound between his groans; for, they 
tell us once more the secret of his wondrous 
fortitude. “0 Lord,” he said, “O Lord, 
who hast the holy knowledge, thou knowest 
manifestly that whereas I might be deliv¬ 
ered from death, I suffer grievous pains in 
body: but in soul am well content to suffer 
these things because I fear thee ” 1 And 
the holy book concludes the narrative with 
these words: “ Thus did this man die, leav¬ 

ing not only to young men, but also to the 
whole nation”—and, we may add, to the 
whole world—“the memory of his death for 
an example of virtue and fortitude.” 2 
And, let us note it well, this virtue and this 
fortitude were mothered by the holy fear 
of God’s just judgments. 

Such, then, is holy fear, and such, its glori¬ 
ous type. Fear, holy fear, is the prepara¬ 
tion by which the soul commences to undo 
the work of sin and begins to come back to 
God. Fear, holy fear, also serves as a 
strong motive to be true to God when pas- 

iV. 30. 

2 V. 31. 


FEAR 


111 


sion calls and temptation lures and trial 
would break the soul. If a man has not yet 
for the first time come to God in the sacred¬ 
ness of sonship, holy fear will help him to 
take the first steps away from evil and unto 
goodness. If one has had the grace of God, 
but has scorned it and has sunk down into 
the depths of renewed transgression, holy 
fear should sound the trumpet call of alarm 
in his soul. If we are knitted to God by 
the hallowed bonds of His grace, the 
strength of this same holy fear will guard 
those golden links of love, that they may 
never be snapped asunder. Thus, all with¬ 
out exception may clasp to the inmost heart 
the solemn warning of the Wise Man, “ Fear 
God, and keep his commandments: for this 
is all man,” 1 and those pregnant words of 
the dear Christ, “Fear ye not them that kill 
the body, and are not able to kill the soul: 
but rather fear him that can destroy both 
body and soul in hell. ’ ’ 2 

Oh, the second warning of the loving 
Christ! Would that all men would heed it! 

1 Eccles. xii, 13. 

2 Matt, x, 28. 


112 


MILESTONES 


Would that all men would live according 
to its blessed wisdom! But they do not. 
Fear not men, but fear God? Men go 
against this advice doubly. They sin in two 
directions. For, many do not fear God and 
do fear men to their own undoing. 

They do not fear God. Ever so many 
men have come to consider what is really a 
transgression against the law of God, and 
therefore a crime against the Almighty, as 
an indiscretion, a misfortune, a disease per¬ 
haps. This is their attitude of mind 
whether they deal with violators of civil law 
or with sinners against God. As for the 
first, they will talk maudlin sentiment and 
will maintain that the one and only object 
of the imposition of penalty is to safeguard 
society and to reform the so-called criminal. 
Retributive justice? The inflicting of the 
just deserts of the violation of law unto the 
end that the order disturbed may be re¬ 
stored? Nonsense and medievalism! And 
as for the second, namely, offenders against 
God’s holy law, they put aside any thought 
of punishment for these “failings” as some¬ 
thing monstrous, and style retribution as 


FEAR 


113 


outrageous and barbarous and superstitious. 
According to them, criminals, not only 
against society, but against the august maj¬ 
esty of God, are to be treated as for a sick¬ 
ness, coddled into a more healthy moral 
state, coaxed into amendment. 

Such sentimentalists know so little about 
the infinite excellence and adorable majesty 
of God, that they fancy that they know all 
and are quite sure that penalty in retribu¬ 
tion for guilt cannot fall within the economy 
of God’s dealings with men. And so, they 
dream and dream, whilst the thunder storm 
is gathering which may bring in its wake 
temporal and eternal destruction. 

Moreover, all men, as often as they rush 
into the rebellion of mortal sin, forget to 
fear God. If they will not blind themselves, 
they know that they may die at any time. 
They know not when the knell of death will 
sound for them; but this they know, or ought 
to know, that if when death strikes they are 
in the revolt of sin, the awful depths of hell 
will yawn wide to receive them and will hold 
them forevermore. And yet, men will sin 
and sin—and sleep! when they are not cer- 


114 


MILESTONES 


tain but that their next conscious moment 
may find them before an angry God—and 
after that, the endless blackness of despair. 
No, they do not fear God. But, in heaven’s 
name, where is their faith, that they can 
thus set their eternal happiness upon the 
hazard of the dice? This, truly, is but 
another proof, where no further proof is 
needed, that, like the other holy things which 
tend to our supernal well-being, fear too is 
conditioned in its results by the liveliness 
of our faith. 

If all sin means getting away from the 
salutary fear of God’s judgments—and it 
does—this is especially true of the neglect 
of the religious observances to which men 
are bound under serious obligation. From 
some sins men may restrain themselves be¬ 
cause of their regard for exterior respect¬ 
ability or because the refinement of their 
nature recoils from the vileness of certain 
excesses. But the shirking of religious 
obligations does not bring with it a social 
stigma, nor is it opposed to the delicacy of 
culture. And thus, some—nay, many—even 
of those who are gifted with the blessing of 



FEAR 


115 


the true faith of Christ’s only Church, are 
shockingly remiss in this particular. They 
are so, because they have gotten away from 
the reverence which springs from holy fear. 

The Church commands her children to 
attend Holy Mass on Sundays as the pre¬ 
scribed way of complying with the mandate 
of God, “ Remember that thou keep holy 
the Sabbath day.” She bids them abstain 
from flesh meat on Fridays and to fast on 
certain days and during certain seasons: 
and she places this duty upon her members 
in order that, in memory of the sufferings 
of the Savior Christ, they may bear a share 
in His pains and may keep alive the recol¬ 
lection of His all-enduring love, whilst at 
the same time they offer up some atonement 
for their transgressions and store up the 
strength which comes from the mastery of 
the passions. ‘Yet, there are found those 
who neglect these duties and violate these 
commandments, although the sanction of 
God Himself is back of the mandates. 

There is no reference here to cases where 
there exist real excuses and valid reasons 
for failure to comply with the order of the 


116 


MILESTONES 


Church, who is not a cruel tyrant, but a ten¬ 
der mother. But, two pictures rise before 
me, different in every detail. I see men or 
women, who look out from their comfortable 
homes upon a rather dreary day and who 
decide that “ really they do not feel like 
going to Mass to-day and do not think that 
they will go.” They are too indolent to 
bear the inconvenience required to bestir 
themselves. They may prefer the satis¬ 
faction of a leisurely reading of the Sunday 
paper or the pleasure of a trip into the 
country or a round upon the links—or what 
not, to the fulfillment of what is a bounden 
duty. Or, I see them, with full knowledge 
that to-day is a day of abstinence, decide 
that they do not care for a diet without meat 
or that they do not wish to cause any annoy¬ 
ance to a host or hostess by refusing to ac¬ 
cept the goodly abundance set before them— 
and Friday may take care of itself! And 
as I look at such conduct, I cannot help 
wondering what men and women, such as 
these, would have done or would do, if they 
were placed in circumstances of real dif¬ 
ficulty. 


FEAR 


117 


For, I see another picture, the picture of 
the venerable old man who refused to com¬ 
promise his loyalty to his church, which 
brought the commands of God to him. I 
see him beaten and broken and bleeding and 
dying for fidelity to the religious observ¬ 
ances of the law that bound him. Oh, the 
difference! And the reason of the dif¬ 
ference is precisely the different place held 
by the holy fear of God in his life and in 
the lives of the comfortable egotists of to¬ 
day. 

Such people as these do not fear God. 
Yet there are countless others who by their 
craven fear of men go against the other part 
of Christ’s exhortation. It is not a pleasant 
thing to have our bravery questioned and to 
have the charge of cowardice thrown into 
our teeth. But sad truth compels the 
statement that the number of those who do 
fear men, even more than they fear God, 
is legion. 

We should not fear those who can go so 
far as to kill the body. Thus speaks the 
brave Christ. Yet we do fear the lifted 
eyebrow, the scornful word, the condescend- 


118 


MILESTONES 


ing smile of pity or contempt—and we turn 
away from God and duty. These strictures 
are not random talk. We know what hu¬ 
man respect is and what it does. And by 
human respect is not meant the proper 
regard for our fellowmen and for their 
reasonable opinions of us or of our doings. 
Such regard is quite proper. But, human 
respect does mean that consideration for 
the thoughts of others which weighs in the 
balance against our fulfillment of duty. 

Many a man would rebuke the narrator 
of improper stories and indelicate jests, or, 
if he be not called upon to do that, at least 
he would take himself away from the com¬ 
pany of such as indulge in the like—if he 
did not fear the thoughts and tongues of 
men. Many a woman would refuse to 
countenance, by her adoption of it, a manner 
of dress which is unworthy of the sweet 
sacredness of her womanhood and which 
makes a direct appeal to the carnal—if she 
were not afraid to place herself in opposi¬ 
tion to the dictates of a foolish fashion and 
to brave the sharp words of her associates’ 
criticism. Many a person would recoil 



FEAR 


119 


from staining the purity of mind and soul 
by reading what is besmirched with the vile¬ 
ness of the unclean, or by patronizing plays 
which pander to the pruriency of the in¬ 
delicate—but for the apprehension of the 
sneers of others. “What will others say?” 
is often more powerful than “What does 
God command?” 

What will others say? For matter of 
that, what difference does it make what they 
will think or say, if only we are true to our¬ 
selves and to our God ? Shall we be afraid 
of those others, who after all are only our 
fellow servants before the majesty of our 
Maker? They are not greater than we, 
that we should cringe before them. Rather, 
when we are on God’s side (and we are 
always that, when we are for the right), we 
are greater than those whose displeasure 
we fear so much. 

We should love our fellowmen; yet we 
should not fear them. It is God whom we 
should both fear and love. Now, the more 
we fear God, the less we shall fear men; and 
the more we love God, the more we shall love 
our fellowmen. Hence, let us use all our ef- 



120 


MILESTONES 


forts to grow in the fear of God and in His 
love. Then we shall do our whole duty as 
regards our fellowmen. 

The sacredness of holy fear will not only 
bring to God the poor unfortunate who has 
not yet known His love; it will not only 
draw away from the paths of prodigal in¬ 
dulgence the wanderer who has wasted his 
substance living riotously: but, in the souls 
of those who are united with their Father, 
it will be a safeguard all through the days 
of trial here below. And therefore let us 
hold fast to this salutary fear, and let us 
remember that the same God who gives the 
commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy 
whole soul, and with thy whole mind,” 1 
tells us in His unerring wisdom: “Fear 
God, and keep the commandments: for this 
is all man.” 2 

i Matt, xxii, 37; Deut. vi, 5. 

2 Eccles. xii, 13. 


CHAPTER IV 


JOB—HOPE 

Hope, next step towards repentance and justification. 
Power of hope; in material things; in super¬ 
natural efforts.—Nature. Material object: God 
our Supreme Good; means to God, namely, help 
of actual grace and remission of sins. Our need 
of grace. Hope flows from faith. Errors as to 
nature of hope. Twofold error of Reformers; by 
exaggerating; by minimizing. Motive of hope is 
holy: p^oof.—Necessity for repentance (example 
of Peter and Judas) ; for conduct of life.—Job as 
type. His history; his example.—Grounds of 
hope. Christ’s loving care for us.—Effects: 
patience; spiritual outlook as against material¬ 
istic viewpoint; courage. 

In tracing the way which leads to the 
soul’s life of justification through the ap¬ 
plied merits of Christ the Redeemer our 
investigations have shown us that, for the 
adult who for the first time comes to the 
grace of God, faith is the earliest milestone 
on the heavenly pathway. The other stages 

are common to all who are deprived of 

121 


122 


MILESTONES 


sanctifying grace—sinners all, but possessed 
of the faith which places them in super¬ 
natural relation to God. 

The second step forward in this true 
“Pilgrim’s Progress” is penance, or repent¬ 
ance. This repentance may be based upon 
the love of God who is offended, and thus 
will constitute perfect contrition; or it may 
stand upon grounds which are less noble 
than this, but which still have reference to 
God, and thus will constitute imperfect con¬ 
trition or attrition. In either case the proc¬ 
ess of repentance begins with the realization 
of one’s sinfulness before an offended Lord. 
Fear of God’s just judgments strikes salu¬ 
tary terror into the trembling soul and 
makes it grasp the dread truth that “it is 
an evil and a bitter thing to leave the 
Lord . . . God. ’ ’ 1 After this, without tak¬ 
ing his eyes from his own vileness and from 
the awful punishments of a justly angered 
God, the sinner looks up to the loving-kind¬ 
ness of his Father in heaven. Justice may 
well crush the cowering heart into nameless 
fear of overwhelming disaster; but the 

i Jerem. ii, 19. 



HOPE 


123 


mercy of the great Lover of men lifts the 
soul up to the hope by which it trusts that 
because of Christ God will be propitious. 

Yes, hope enters into salutary repentance. 
Hope moves the soul against its sins. Hope 
has its part in rounding out the preparation 
for sanctification. 

Even in the natural and material affairs 
of life hope is all powerful. The desire of 
some good which, whilst hard of attainment, 
is still within the reach of energetic action 
(and such a desire is precisely what hope 
is) 1 is back of much that is accomplished in 
this world of ours. Men will labor long and 
hard and in trying circumstances; for years 
they will bear the strain of mental or bodily 
exertion; they will plod on under a burden 
which is all but too heavy; they will per- 
severingly push forward the affairs of their 
home, their city, their nation, and they will 
endure the pangs of waiting—if only they 
can cling to the strength of hope. It was 
hope which nerved the founders of our 
nation to brave the storms of war. It 
strengthened each soldier in the fight and 

1 Cf. St. Thomas 1, 2, q. 40, a. 1 and 2, 2, q. 17, a. 1. 


124 


MILESTONES 


in the harder agonies of want or famine in 
wintry marchings and hidings. It gave 
courage to the hardy pioneers who with 
axe and rifle opened up and held the vast 
stretches of land that lay to the West. It 
sustained in every trial and comforted in 
every adversity, as the nation grew through 
struggle to the stature of manhood. 

There can be no doubt about it, in the 
affairs of men if hope is gone, energy is 
killed. When the gentle, but potent, power 
of hope is destroyed, what will become of 
a man, as an individual ? as the head of the 
family? as a member of society? As an 
individual, his activity dies as if a knife 
had pierced its way to the heart or a slow 
poison had drugged the springs of life. 
For him there is no mental effort and no 
bodily exertion, but only a dreary, monot¬ 
onous, soul-killing dragging out of existence 
without the smallest exhilaration of the joy 
of living, until he either throws himself 
into the vileness of dissolute excesses or 
cuts short life’s bleak way by a suicide’s 
death. As the head of the family, he has 
no care for his own, no heroism of sacrifice, 


HOPE 


125 


no thought of being up and doing, when the 
cold hand of despair has strangled the life 
of hope within his soul. And if, as a mem¬ 
ber of society, his hope is lost, if the nation 
were to lose heart by the despondency of 
its sons, progress would cease, activity 
would languish to its death, and the dreary 
desolation of chaos would engulf the con¬ 
quests of ages. 

Now, if even in the natural and material 
affairs of this world hope is such a power 
and such an absolute necessity, there is 
still greater need for its strength in the 
supernatural efforts which must lead us to 
our heavenly home. If in these supernat¬ 
ural strivings we lose our hold on it, we 
shall drift down and down, even to the abyss 
over which lie everlasting death and despair. 

Without hope there would have been none 
of the greatness which we see in the soul- 
world of mankind. The heroism of the 
martyrs would have been an impossibility. 
The sainted exaltation of confessors and 
virgins would never have rejoiced the heart 
of God. The loving repentance of sinners 
and the holy, though hidden, lives of God’s 


126 


MILESTONES 


uncanonized saints would never have 
claimed the regard of heaven. 

And the need of this supernatural hope 
is the greater, because the things of the 
w r orld of spiritual excellence are able to 
draw us less perceptibly than the things of 
the material universe. Heaven and the 
ways which lead to it; God and His love or 
His displeasure; the dignity of the pos¬ 
session of grace and the economy of the 
ways of God towards men—all these are 
more distant and more vague to us than are 
the things that lie about us and beckon us 
on to effort. Yet they are more vital to us 
than all the things of earth and they should 
mean more to us than anything that this 
world holds. For, if we are to reach our 
heavenly home, we must act, and if we are 
to act, we must hope. 

As to the nature of hope (and we must 
conceive it correctly), we can derive a satis¬ 
factory notion of what it truly is from the 
act of hope, which we repeat in our prayers. 
Therein we say to God that, relying on His 
infinite goodness and promises, we hope, 
that is, we firmly expect and confidently 


HOPE 


127 


trust, to obtain pardon for our sins, the help 
of His grace, and life everlasting, through 
the merits of Jesus Christ, our Lord and 
Redeemer. By such an act, supernatural 
in its character and elicited by the aid of 
God’s accompanying grace, we rely on God’s 
pledged word to assist us to tend cour¬ 
ageously towards our supernatural destiny 
by the means which He has provided for 
this purpose. And the means are: the 
forgiveness of our sins and the help of His 
grace. Thus, the object of our confiding 
trust, the thing towards which this saving 
hope reaches forth its longing, is, first of 
all, God Himself who is our true happiness 
and our blessed joy, and, secondly, the means 
of coming to Him. The first imports the 
salvation of our soul in the possession of 
God in the thrilling vision of the unveiled 
Godhead; it is the “life everlasting” which 
is the consummation of the soul’s true life 
through sanctifying grace. The second sig¬ 
nifies the assistance of God’s actual grace 
and the remission of our sins. 

The actual grace of God is that transient 
operation of the Godhead upon our spirit, 


128 


MILESTONES 


in the enlightenment of our intellect and 
the strong impulse to our will to cling to 
good and avoid evil. This actual grace of 
God we need: without it we can never come 
to salvation. 

The Pelagians and Semi-Pelaganians, 
ancient heretics, followed by several modern 
sects, such as the Universalists and the Uni¬ 
tarians, deny that man needs any help above 
his nature in order to reach his last blessed 
end. In the pride of human sufficiency 
they reject mankind’s elevation to a super¬ 
natural destiny, the fall of the human race 
through the disloyalty of its first parents, 
and the need of a Redeemer to buy back the 
forfeited glory. Yet, the voice of God pro¬ 
claims them to be in error; and it is to God, 
and not to human pride, that we bow down 
in assent. 

We need this grace of God for the twofold 
reason that without it we will not conquer 
in the fight which rages between the spirit 
and the flesh, and we cannot perform any 
supernatural act which will lead us to our 
destiny as children of God. 

As to the first, we know by bitter expe- 


HOPE 


129 


rience the sting of concupiscence; we have 
felt the fury of the storm of temptation; 
we have looked full upon the face of the 
death of the soul in the attacks made upon 
us by the powers of hell. Where shall we 
get the strength to conquer in the fight? 
Prom ourselves? Yes, from ourselves, re¬ 
ply those who are too proud to acknowledge 
their weakness. But their weakness an¬ 
swers for itself; and the world that is not 
of God proclaims aloud its inability to stem 
the torrent of corruption. 

Our help must come from God—or we fall. 
Surely, if, in the fight against evil, man 
could win of himself, the great St. Paul 
would have been equal to the task. His 
loving daring for the cause of God was 
gigantic; he was burning up with zeal for 
the glory of God’s majesty; by the strong 
chains of unlimited devotion he was linked 
to that Jesus whom once he had persecuted; 
he passed over most of the then known world 
in a fiery whirlwind of apostolic energy 
which yearned to bring all men to Christ. 
Truly, a hero and a spiritual giant! Yet 
he tells us that he was helpless of himself. 


130 


MILESTONES 


“Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death?” 1 That 
is the agonizing cry of a heart, which felt 
the sting of evil, the weakness of nature, 
and the need of help from some power 
higher than self. Paul does not rashly 
claim that he can win by his native strength 
of will, by the remembrance of his dignity 
as man, by regard for the good opinion of 
others. Not he. The fools do that—and 
they fall. Who shall deliver me? “The 
grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord.” 2 
And that is the answer which is true with 
God’s own truth. 

Furthermore, as grace is necessary to 
put down the risings of concupiscence, so 
too is it necessary to accomplish any of the 
supernatural actions which alone can lead 
us to our heavenly destiny. Since God has 
raised us up to an end beyond the capability 
of any created nature when left to itself, 
only such actions as are in the same elevated 
plane can conduct us to that end. Actions 
which are merely natural, though good, have 

1 Rom. vii, 24. 

2 Rom. vii, 25. 


HOPE 


131 


no proportion with a destiny which is super¬ 
natural; and hence, if they are to count, 
they must be lifted up to the divine order. 
Now, for this uplifting we are dependent 
upon actual grace. It was of this depen¬ 
dence upon God’s grace that the Savior 
spoke when He said: “Without me you 
can do nothing.” 1 As the branch can bring 
forth no fruit, unless it remain in the vine 
and receive nourishment and life from the 
parent-stem, so unless we remain in Christ 
and are subject to His activity which comes 
to us through grace, we can bring forth no 
fruit which will find favor with the heavenly 
Master of the vineyard. 

This same assistance of God’s grace is 
necessary also for the remission of our sins. 
Without grace man might feel some natural 
regret and sorrow for past transgressions; 
but, unless actual grace touch that sorrow, 
it remains of the earth earthy and cannot 
bring down from the Father of’ mercies 
a pardon for sin. 

Such, then, is the twofold object of our 
hope. The reason of that hope is God’s 

i John xv, 5. 


132 


MILESTONES 


goodness in our regard and His unwavering 
fidelity. We shall return to this reason or 
ground of our confiding trust in God later 
on in this chapter. 

Hope is based upon faith and flows forth 
from it as naturally as water gushes from 
a fountain-head. Just as one who has no 
faith in heavenly good things cannot desire 
them with the longing of hope, so too one 
whose faith shows him the thrilling joy of 
heaven, waiting for him as the reward of 
his labors for the Master, can hardly hold 
back the movement of his soul towards the 
attainment of these blessings. This is the 
sense of St. Gregory the Great, who says: 
“On hearing” of the joys of the supernal 
city, “the soul is on fire and longs to be 
where it hopes for endless gladness. ’ ’ 1 
And St. Bernard remarks: “Faith says: 
Good things, great and unthinkable, are 
prepared for God’s faithful ones. Hope 
says: They are kept for me.” 2 

Such is hope—its nature, its object, its 
reason—according to the true teaching of 

1 Horn. 37 in Evang. in Breviary in Common of a Martyr. 

2 In Ps. 90, Serm. 10, n. 1. 



HOPE 


133 


Mother Church. But error stalks abroad 
and strikes its blows at truth, especially 
where interests are most vital. Our past 
considerations must have shown us that by 
this time: it is the case too in the present 
matter. The old Reformers, so-called, erred 
by excess in two directions: on the one hand, 
they exaggerated the role of hope, whilst 
changing its name; and, on the other, they 
minimized its efficacy in its own proper 
sphere. 

In the beginning of our study we con¬ 
sidered the old Protestant position with 
regard to faith as justifying of itself. This 
faith of theirs, to the effect of which they 
attach an unwarranted and exaggerated 
importance, is not intellectual assent to the 
truth of God’s revelation: it is really the 
hope or the confidence that the divine mercy 
will overlook our sinfulness because of 
Christ. They maintain that they are alto¬ 
gether and unreservedly certain that they 
are justified. Nay, they hold that only he 
is forgiven who believes, or trusts, with 
certainty that his sins are taken away by 
the imputation of Christ’s merits, and that 


134 


MILESTONES 


he is one of the predestined. They declare 
that he who does not so trust doubts about 
God’s promises and about the efficacy of 
the death and merits of the Savior . 1 

But, this is error. It contradicts the 
teaching of the dear Christ; and it is very 
properly condemned by the solemn utterance 
of the Council of Trent . 2 It is, of course, 
true that no one with love for our Blessed 
Savior and with reverence for God can 
doubt of the mercy of the Most High or of 
the merits of Christ. But, on the other 
hand, no one whose pride has not blinded 
him to the weakness of his own poor nature 
can cease to fear for himself and for the 
constancy of his fickle will. 

Of a truth, hope is firm and unwavering. 
It must be; nor is there any cause for appre¬ 
hension when we look to God. He will 
bring us home—if we do our part. Yes, 
if we do our part; and there’s the rub. We 
must fear for our weakness, not with a fear 
which will make us doubt God, but with a 
fear which will sharpen our zeal and drive 

1 Cf. Denz. n. 802. 

2 Denz. n. 822. 



HOPE 


135 


us ever closer to Him who can make us 
stronger than ourselves. Our fear of our¬ 
selves will make us cleave closer to Him 
whose nature is almighty goodness and 
whose work is mercy. For, the Psalmist 
says: ‘ 6 They who fear the Lord have hoped 
in the Lord: he is their helper and their 
protector.” 1 

So, the faith divine which works unto 
salvation is not this fiducial faith of the Re¬ 
formers, which is really hope, exaggerated 
to presumption: and faith does not justify 
of itself, but is only one of the dispositions 
which prepare the way for sanctification. 

Whilst this erroneous view of the Refor¬ 
mers exaggerates the role of hope, which 
they call faith, the value of hope, under¬ 
stood according to its true nature, is de¬ 
spised by them. Hope is not as noble a 
motive for sorrow over transgressions as 
charity is; but it is holy. Hope lifts the 
soul up to God and makes it rely on the 
strength of divine aid. Hope longs for God, 
not indeed for His own infinite goodness 
in Himself, but because He is our Supreme 

i Ps. cxiii, 11. 


136 


MILESTONES 


Good; and it sorrows for sin because of the 
loss of eternal happiness. And such a hope 
is hallowed. 

But, by Luther and Calvin and their kind, 
all this was stigmatized as unworthy and 
evil and hypocritical. They said that the 
sorrow which arose from the thought of the 
loss of eternal happiness made a man a 
hypocrite and more of a sinner than before. 
Oh, the folly of poor human pride which 
would pose as knowing more than God and 
better than the Savior of the world! 

Our divine Lord proposed the reward of 
heaven as an incentive to noble activity. 
“Be glad in that day and rejoice,” when 
you shall bear misfortunes for the name of 
the Lord; “/or behold, your reward is great 
in heaven.” 1 The Apostle St. Paul praises 
Moses for his courage under tribulation, 
a courage which was motived by his hope 
of the good to come, “for he looked unto 
the reward .” 2 He tells the Colossians: 
“Whatsoever you do, do it from the heart, 
as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing 

1 Luke vi, 23. 

2 Heb. xi, 26. 


HOPE 137 

that you shall receive of the Lord the reward 
of inheritance.’’ 1 

Thus we see how over and over again in 
the inspired word of God reward is pro¬ 
posed to men as a motive to urge them to 
noble deeds. And, in spite of what may be 
said by blinded men who have gotten away 
from the truth of God, it is clear that what 
God Himself proposes to His children as 
a reason for their conduct cannot lead them 
to what is unworthy or hypocritical or sin¬ 
ful or deserving of divine reprobation. 
Whilst, therefore, hope is not sufficient for 
justification, it is a holy and salutary dispo¬ 
sition of soul leading on to God. 

Holy as it is, it is also quite necessary. 
It is so under a double title: first, it is nec¬ 
essary as a preparation for repentance; 
and secondly, it is necessary for the right 
conduct of life and for reaching our heav¬ 
enly home. 

Its necessity for repentance is pointed 
out by the words of the Council of Trent 
to which reference has so often been made. 2 

1 Coloss, iii, 23, 24. 

2 Denz. n. 798. 


138 


MILESTONES 


How, indeed, could the sinner begin to come 
to God through repentance, unless he hoped 
for the remission of his sins? When the 
realization of the truth that he is a sinner 
has brought a man down from the unstable 
heights of his revolt and has placed him 
face to face with the judgments of an angry 
God who will strike at sin with infinite 
hatred after the time of mercy will have 
passed, how can the sinner mount up to his 
Lord, unless the sweet and comforting 
power of hope lift him? If it does not 
raise him up, he will grovel in his misery 
and sink down into the lowest depths of 
despair. 

Do we need proof of this ? If we do, let 
us look at two scenes which stand out from 
the gospel pages. And first—it is the court 
of the High Priest. A fire casts its ruddy 
light upon the crowd gathered about to 
warm themselves in the chill night air. A 
motley crowd it is, made up of servants and 
hangers-on of the palace. It is buzzing with 
excited talk about the Prophet of Nazareth, 
who even now stands for examination before 


HOPE 


139 


the great Annas. In the midst of the hud¬ 
dling throng stands a strong-faced man, 
hardy with the might of the sea which has 
nurtured him. It is Peter the Galilean. 

But a short time ago he was in the com¬ 
pany of the Master, for whom and with 
whom he professed himself ready to go to 
prison and to death. With wonder stun¬ 
ning his heart he had watched as the beloved 
Master struggled with the agony which was 
crushing him to earth in the sombre garden 
of Gethsemani. Whilst the weary moments 
dragged by, he had slumbered; and he was 
aroused by the Master, as the murmur of 
the approaching mob came to him from the 
gateway of the garden. When the foremost 
ruffians of the band drew near to lay hands 
upon his Leader, Peter struck with the 
sword—and he must have struck to kill. 
Then his world fell in crumbling ruins about 
his head; for, in bonds and all alone the 
Master was led away captive. 

With John, the beloved, Peter followed 
afar off, and came into the court of the High 
Priest to be nearer to his Lord and to see 


140 


MILESTONES 


what would come. And now there he is 
in the midst of the servants. 

The crowd casts upon him glances which 
speak of suspicion and distrust, and fear 
begins to tug at his heart-strings. “Art 
not thou also one of his disciples ?” 1 they 
ask. And Peter denies. Again he is ques¬ 
tioned; and again he denies. Yes, at the 
voice of a girl, he gives a lying answer. 
And at length Peter begins to curse and to 
swear that he knows not the man. 2 

Peter, what have you said and what have 
you done! Before this, you said with a 
holy fervor, lighted at the torch of divine 
revelation, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the 
living God.” 3 This very night you received 
your first Holy Communion and were made 
a priest of the Most High by the Christ 
whom you loved. You were ready to die 
for Him; and you declared that, though all 
should deny Him, you would never fail in 
your faithful allegiance. And now—you 
“know not the man!” 

From out of the hall where He has stood 

1 John xviii, 25. 

2 Cf. Matt, xxvi, 74. 

3 Matt, xvi, 16. 


HOPE 


141 


before Annas, the Savior is led across the 
court into the portion of the palace set 
aside for the use of Caiaphas. He is going 
to His doom; and He knows it. He is 
entering into the place where the trap of 
hatred will be sprung. But, in His hour of 
sorrow, He thinks of His recreant Apostle. 
“And the Lord turning looked on Peter” 1 
with a look bearing pain and reproach and 
sorrow, but telling of mercy and love. 
“And Peter remembered the word of the 
Lord, as he had said: Before the cock crow, 
thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter go¬ 
ing out, wept bitterly.” 2 Yes, out into the 
night there stumbles a broken-hearted man, 
and the darkness before the dawn hides 
him from our sight. 

Whither does he go, tottering under the 
burning lash of regret in his soul? We 
know not. But, we know whither he came 
at length. He came to the feet of the 
Mother of Jesus. For, on the first Easter 
day it was with John, who had taken Mary 
to his own, that Magdalen found Peter. 3 

1 Luke xxii, 61. 

2 Id. vv. 61, 62. 

3 Cf. John xx, 1 ff. 


142 


MILESTONES 


And at the feet of the Mother, who has ever 
been the refuge of sinners and the comforter 
of the afflicted, Peter must have poured 
forth his tears of broken-hearted sorrow. 
At her feet he must have groaned the 
halting words of grief, which had grasped 
the voiceless love which spoke from the eyes 
of the Christ as He went forward to His 
fate. With a sorrow which made for for¬ 
giveness, Peter repented, because hope shed 
its soft sweetness through the thick, black 
night of his treason and lighted the way to 
the loving-kindness of God. 

And the other scene ? Look at the swift- 
moving figure that takes its way through the 
night, scurrying from the Supper Room to 
the dwelling of the priests of the Temple. 
The man has just now left the company of 
Christ, and in his traitor soul throbs the 
resolve that he will do quickly what he has 
determined to do. Avarice has corroded 
the heart of one who was chosen to be 
an Apostle of the Master, and it has made 
him what the Master called him, “a devil.” 1 

Judas has covenanted with the enemies of 


i John vi, 71. 


HOPE 


143 


the great Prophet to deliver Him up to 
them: he has been seeking an opportunity 
to accomplish his fell purpose. And now 
the time has come. Quickly he arranges for 
the help he needs. Cautiously he warns his 
associates of the care to be taken after the 
sign, which he agrees upon, shall have 
pointed out the victim. Then on to the 
garden of Gethsemani. 

There at the gateway the mob pauses to 
put some order into its chaotic confusion. 
Then the Master comes forward with His 
disciples—Christ at the head of His own; 
and Judas walks in the forefront of the 
enemies of the Master. And the Savior 
and the traitor Apostle stand face to face! 

The questioning; the prostration of the 
front ranks of the mob at Christ’s word of 
power;, the turning of the soldiers to the 
traitor leader, w T ho must give the sign lest 
under the uncertain light of the moon and 
the flaring of torches there should be any 
mistake—and then the fallen Apostle steps 
forward to his forsaken Lord. He bends 
towards Him: he places his hands upon His 
shoulders, and with the horrible perversion 



144 


MILESTONES 


of the sacred sign of love he lays his trai¬ 
tor lips upon the Master’s cheek. “Hail, 
Rabbi” 1 —and he kisses Him. “Friend, 
whereto art thou come?” 2 “Judas, dost 
thou betray the Son of man with a kiss?” 3 
Then the seizure of the Savior and His sad 
journey to His doom. 

After the remnant of the night has passed, 
a procession takes its way to the palace of 
Pilate, that Rome may set its seal upon the 
condemnation of Him whom the Sanhedrim 
has devoted to death as a blasphemer against 
God. Judas sees death leering forth from 
the faces of the triumphant mob, and he 
knows that the Christ is on His way to 
destruction. The realization of his awful 
deed rushes over his crushed spirit. He 
hates the money for which he sold his Mas¬ 
ter; and, with a very hell in his heart, he 
rushes to the Temple to find those who had 
bought him and to cast down upon the floor 
the price of innocent blood. 

Dark was the night into which Peter went 
forth after his denial of his Lord; yet it was 

1 Matt, xxvi, 49. 

2 Id. v. 50. 

3 Luke xxii, 48. 


HOPE 


145 


brightened by the comforting glow of hope. 
But, though the morning splendor of the 
Eastern sun is gilding the whole of the city 
of David, the blackest of black nights is 
shrouding the terror-stricken soul of the 
traitor Judas. He has sold his Master, who 
even now is on His way to death. And up 
from the crushing knowledge of his tre¬ 
mendous guilt mount the dense clouds of 
fear, shattered by the thunderbolts of the 
wrath of an outraged God. All hell is 
shrieking for the traitor’s soul. And he 
will not think of the sweet voice of the 
Master, w r ho called him friend even in the 
hour of betrayal, or he thinks of Him only 
to increase the overwhelming burden of his 
own unspeakable crime. He closes the 
gates of heaven against himself, and he 
sinks down into the bottomless abyss of 
despair. 

And the end? Look at the gruesome 
sight of a limp body, dangling at the halter’s 
end from the limb of a tree. See the ghastly 
burden swaying, swaying with the passing 
winds. Gaze on the face distorted with the 
struggle of violent death and on the eyes 


146 


MILESTONES 


glaring with sightless orbs at the reproach 
which will never die. Oh, the fearful con¬ 
trast between this sight and that of Peter at 
the feet of Christ’s Mother! Hope brought 
Peter back to Christ: the loss of hope led 
the traitor Judas to despair and to his end¬ 
less doom. So true is it that hope is neces¬ 
sary for repentance. 

Hope is also urgently necessary for the 
conduct of life. It is not enough for us to 
get away from evil and to come to God: we 
must, besides, stay with Him and arrive at 
last at our eternal destiny of joy. Now, it 
is by hope that we tend to our heavenly 
home. The gift of final perseverance in the 
friendship of God is a something to which 
we cannot lay a claim under the title of 
justice. It is a boon for which we must 
pray. We beg for it when we say to God, 
“Thy Kingdom come!” We petition for it 
when we plead with our blessed Mother 
Mary to “pray for us sinners now and at 
the hour of our death.” Yes, we must 
pray, or we shall not come safely through 
the dangers of a life which is a warfare 
upon earth. Now, without hope there can 


147 


HOPE 

be no prayer which will mount to the throne 
of God; for, prayer without the calm, con¬ 
fiding trust of hope is no prayer at all and 
is almost an insult to the mercy of the 
Father. 

Hope must be our comrade on our way 
through life, no matter how far we advance 
in holiness and perfection. “And now 
there remain faith, hope, and charity, these 
three: but the greatest of these is charity.” 1 
Yes, charity is the greatest of the three; but 
faith and hope must remain . We can never 
do without them, until faith is swallowed 
up in vision and hope is merged into the 
fruition of what we longed for. And even 
though with Paul we should mount to such 
an excess of charity as to wish to be ana¬ 
thema for our brethren, 2 yet with the same 
heroic lover of Christ we must always cling 
to hope, and say: “I press towards the 
mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation 
of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, 
as many as are perfect, be thus minded.” 3 
For a figure of hope, in so far as its in- 

11 Cor. xiii, 13. 

2 Cf. Rom. ix, 3. 

3 Phil, iii, 14, 15. 


148 


MILESTONES 


fluence in the matter of repentance is con¬ 
cerned, we need look no farther than the 
two pictures which we have gazed upon in 
the case of Peter and Judas. For its power 
in regard to the noble conduct of life 
through all our days, and especially when 
the sun is hidden behind the clouds of 
adversity, we may take as a type holy Job. 
True, he is usually put before us as the type 
of patience; but it was hope that was the 
basis of his patience. 

We need not search into the details of his 
life: the larger outlines are all sufficient for 
our purpose. 1 He was a great man of the 
people of the East, perhaps an Aramean 
of the land of Hus. Rich he was in docks 
and herds, and many dependents did his 
bidding. Children too he had, seven sons 
and three daughters; but they were not an 
unalloyed blessing, since their lives often 
pained the religious soul of their father. 
Though he was not of the chosen people of 
God, he was a good and religious man; and 
in Scripture the praise is recorded of him 

i For a judicious and illuminating account, see Cath. En- 
cycl. s. v. “Job.” 


HOPE 149 

that he 4 4 was simple and upright, and fear¬ 
ing God and avoiding evil.” 1 

We behold this true man peaceful in his 
simple magnificence, glad in the esteem of 
his friends, pleasing in the sight of God. 
Then, by the permission of God, a veritable 
tempest of misfortunes strikes him and he 
is subjected to trial after trial, any one of 
which would have been enough to break the 
spirit of a weaker man. 

His flocks and herds are killed or driven 
off by the enemy; and he endures it. His 
children are destroyed by a whirlwind from 
the desert; and, though pierced to the center 
of his being, he bows his sorrowing heart 
before the majesty of God. He is stricken 
“with a very grievous ulcer, from the sole 
of the foot even to the top of his head ”; 2 
and in solitary desolation he bears up under 
the calamity. His wife turns against him, 
reproaches him with his simplicity, taunts 
him, and urges him to speak against the 
Most High; and he falters not in his trust 
in God. 

1 Job i, 1. 

2 ii, 7. 


150 


MILESTONES 


Then comes the hardest of all his trials, 
namely, the doubtful and captious conso¬ 
lation offered by his friends, who really 
tempt him as they offer solace. In the 
greatness of his sorrow and in answer to 
their charges and false comfortings Job is 
at first overwhelmed by the depth of his woe 
and can hardly glimpse the brightness which 
the future holds. All is black and cheerless. 
But, sometime and somehow God will pro¬ 
vide, and still will he trust in Him. 1 Then 
his vision clears and his hope rises to the 
lofty height of his sublime declaration of 
the joys which will be his in the life to come. 2 
At length the trial is past: Satan is con¬ 
founded: Jahve commends the innocence of 
Job and restores him to a prosperity greater 
far than that from which he had allowed 
His servant to be cast down. 

Such was Job, the model of patience. 
But, what was the source of his patience? 
It was his hope. Look at him a broken 
man, in utter destitution, in bleeding an¬ 
guish of heart, in unrelieved dereliction, 

1 xiii, 15. 

2 xix, 23 ff. 


% 


HOPE 


151 


like some wounded beast that has crawled 
away from the sight of men to die alone in 
misery. See him a palpitating sore, almost 
a living death, derided as a fool by her who 
should have been his helpmate, accused by 
those who called themselves his friends. 
And hearken to the words which fall from 
his lips; for, they tell of the source of his 
strength. In the midst of his sorrow he 
says of God: “ Although he should kill me, 
I will trust in him,” 1 I will hope in Him. 
And at the glimpse of what the hereafter 
holds for him, he exclaims exultingly: 
“For I know that my Eedeemer liveth, and 
in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. 
And I shall be clothed again with my skin, 
and in my flesh I shall see my God. Whom 
I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, 
and not another: this my hope is laid up in 
my bosom.” 2 Here we see the power im¬ 
parted by hope for bearing the hard things 
of life. 

And so, we understand that hope is neces¬ 
sary, on the one hand, for salutary repent- 

ixiii, 15. 

2 xix, 25-27. 


152 


MILESTONES 


ance and, on the other, for the living of such 
a life as will lead us to our home with God. 

Yes, have it, we must; and have it, we can. 
For, the grounds of this hope of ours are 
firmer than the rock-ribbed mountains. 
Our confidence is based upon the infinite 
goodness and promises of our Almighty 
Father in heaven, on the merciful loving¬ 
kindness of our dear Savior. God knows 
how to help us; for He is wisdom itself. 
That divine knowledge of His has fixed the 
orbits of sun and moon and stars: it has 
outlined the pathway of all parts of the uni¬ 
verse: it goes beyond all this, even to the 
scrutiny of man’s inmost secret thoughts 
and desires: it goes out over the free wilful¬ 
ness of His intelligent creatures through 
the ways of His providence, so that abso¬ 
lutely nothing is hidden from His all-seeing 
eye. Besides, He is able to help us; for He 
is omnipotent. “For he spoke and they 
were made: he commanded and they were 
created.” 1 The whole fabric of creation 
sprang into being as the result of an act of 
His effective will: it all depends upon Him 

i Ps. XYxii, 9. 


HOPE 


153 


so absolutely, that all would sink back into 
the soundless depths of nothingness, were 

that will to cease for an instant. This will 

» 

of God’s, active and omnipotent, knows no 
difficulty; because it is as easy for omnip¬ 
otence to call countless new worlds into 
existence as it is to paint the lilies of the field 
or to feed the birds of the air. In addition 
to all this wisdom and power, God wishes 
to aid us; for He is goodne’ss illimitable, 
and from eternity His goodness has brooded 
over us and has claimed us as His own. 
And, finally, He has promised to be our 
stay, if we will but come to him and cling 
to Him; and His fidelity is as imperishable 
as Himself. 

These are hope’s foundations, surely 
strong enough to bear the brunt of hostile 
attacks: they are reasons which rest on the 
very Godhead. And as we look at the lov¬ 
able and loved Humanity of our Lord, Jesus 
Christ, the sweetness of His all-enduring, 
all-sacrificing love for us finds its way into 
our heart of hearts and steadies our trust 
in Him. 

Can we doubt of His care for us? Not 


154 


MILESTONES 


with His life before us. Every tear fiom 
His baby eyes, every yearning of His child¬ 
hood’s exile, every labor of His hard hidden 
life at Nazareth, every step of His wearied 
feet during the public ministry, every word 
from His sacred lips calling the wanderers 
back to the love of God, every groan of His 
crushed heart in the shadow of Gethsemani’s 
anguish, every voiceless shudder beneath 
the tearing scourge, every drop of blood 
spurting forth from beneath the thorny 
crown, every pang of the endless hours upon 
the gibbet of shame with the unspeakable 
torment of the overwhelming dereliction by 
the Father, every gasping paroxysm of pain 
until He yielded up the ghost tells of the 
boundless love which would win us from our 
doom and bring us to the love of Him who 
loved us to the end. Well, indeed, may we 
say with the Psalmist, “In thee, O Lord, 
have I hoped: let me never be confounded. ’ ’ 1 
And, in fact, if we hope, we shall never 
be confounded. For, hope not only has a 
part in the repentance for sin, as we have 
seen; it not only gently urges us on to prayer 

i Ps. xxx, 2. 


HOPE 


155 


and to earnest effort to gain our heavenly 
reward: it also gives great strength in bear¬ 
ing the trials and sufferings of this mortal 
life. What hope did for holy Job, we 
have considered. It will do the same for 
us. 

Many hard things must come into the 
lives of all of us; and we cannot avoid them, 
try as we may. Pain has a spiritual tonic 
effect upon our souls; and, besides, it has 
another mission to fulfill. It must mold us 
to resemblance with our Lord. The broth¬ 
ers and sisters of Christ must be likened 
to their Elder Brother. He whose life was 
one of deepest sorrow has traced the path¬ 
way which all must tread, whether they will 
it or not. The cross will cast its shadow 
over the life of each one. Shrink from it; 
and it will pursue. Fear it; and it will 
grow more terrible. Cast it away; and 
another, more grievous, will be laid upon 
galled shoulders and bleeding hearts. But, 
welcome it with patience, if not with love; 
and it will become a sweet support and a 
treasure beyond the riches of earth. 

Now, whilst love for our Crucified Leader 


156 


MILESTONES 


is the strongest of all motives for thus wel¬ 
coming the cross, hope too has its own 
distinctive power in the same direction. 
With St. Paul all of us may say: “If in 
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are 
of all men most miserable”; 1 but “I reckon 
that the sufferings of this time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory to 
come, that shall be revealed in us”; 2 “for 
that which is at present momentary and 
light of our tribulation, worketh for us 
above measure exceedingly an eternal 
weight of glory.” 3 

The solution of the problem of evil in the 
world, together with the understanding of 
the inequality of the distribution of the good 
things of this life, is hidden from us in its 
details. We know, indeed, that all, bitter 
and sweet, good and evil (except where 
evil means sin, which is not God’s handi¬ 
work, though tolerated in His world)—all 
comes from God’s love for His dear ones 
and tends to their greater advantage; and 
we are certain that all will be plain after the 

11 Cor. xv, 19. 

2 Rom. viii, 18. 

* II Cor. iv, 17. 


HOPE 


157 


final reckoning. And, though we do not 
now see all the details of God *s all-wise plan 
(and in honest humility we must confess 
that we do not), we can securely trust His 
love. 

It has just been said that everything 
comes from the love of God. Yet that -state¬ 
ment must be modified, except in so far as 
it refers to the permissive will of God, which 
can draw good out of evil. Much of the 
misery of life comes, not from the love of 
God, but from the injustice and malice of 
men. The grinding down of the poor to 
the degradation of pauperism by injustice 
of contract, by enforced starvation, by the 
blunting of the powers of soul and body, 
comes from the greed of men, and not from 
the justice or the love of God. 

Sane legislation may do something to 
curb human depravity in its excesses; and 
such legislation should be zealously for¬ 
warded and enthusiastically welcomed. The 
lawful efforts of strong association may do 
more, by extorting some consideration for 
the oppressed from the tyrants whose big¬ 
gest motive is self-interest; and may the 


158 


MILESTONES 


weak continue in their endeavors for self- 
help under the blessing of Mother Church, 
whilst at the same time they guard them¬ 
selves against attempting an equally galling 
tyranny! A return to the deep realities of 
religion may do a great deal; it is, in very 
truth, the mightiest means of all for attain¬ 
ing lasting betterment. Yes, all of these 
means may and will help to an amelioration 
of a sad condition of affairs. But, as long 
as the condition lasts (and to some degree it 
will always be found to exist), the surest sal¬ 
vation for the oppressed is to look up from 
an unjust earth to a benign heaven, from the 
infamous hatred of men to the sweet ma¬ 
jesty and love of God, from the heart-break¬ 
ings of this world to the thrilling joys of 
life everlasting. 

The condition of things which makes for 
so much sorrow here below, especially in 
the ruthless war between the blind fury of 
capital and the reckless tyranny of labor, 
has come about as the result of many causes. 
It has come because men have forgotten the 
love for God and man. It has come because 
men have cast away the righteous fear of 


HOPE 


159 


the just Judge. But it has come also be¬ 
cause men have torn themselves away from 
the benign influence of hope. 

They are so bound up with the things of 
earth, that they scorn, if they do not deny, 
a heaven above. Here below in this world 
of the senses they have placed their heaven, 
and they have made material welfare the 
sole object of their activity. And, after all, 
in view of their antecedents, what wonder 
is it ? If the fear of God is gone, and with 
it the dread of an eternal retribution; if 
hope for the rewards of a loving Father has 
faded away; what wonder that this world 
of ours should become the battle ground of 
higher brutes ? What wonder that strength 
alone rules the conflict ? What wonder that 
the weak are crowded out and trampled 
upon in the struggle for existence ? If eter¬ 
nal heaven and everlasting hell are put away 
from the thoughts of men, what wonder that 
they should try to make their heaven here 
and should succeed in making a hell for so 
many? 

This spirit of materialism, which bounds 
the gaze of men by the horizon of earth, is 


160 


MILESTONES 


diametrically opposed to the spirit of hope. 
It was one of the causes (perhaps the chief 
cause) of the terrible calamity of almost 
universal war which wasted the manhood, 
yes, and the womanhood and childhood of 
half a world. The late beloved Pontiff, 
Benedict XV, pointed this out in his first en¬ 
cyclical. With striking clearness of vision 
he assigned four disorders as being back of 
the terrible scourge, namely: want of mutual 
love; contempt for authority; injustice of 
class against class; and the making of mate¬ 
rial welfare the sole object of human activ¬ 
ity. The first of these ruinous forces comes 
from the lack of the spirit of charity; the 
second is closely connected with the loss of 
faith; the third results from the exclusion 
of the fear of God; and the fourth is caused 
and aggravated by getting away from the 
influence of hope. 

Would that, in those evil days, the shock 
of realization had driven men back to the 
true appreciation of the real value of things! 
But it did not. Would that they might 
awake to-day to the knowledge of where 


HOPE 


161 


their true interest lies! We must live and 
work in the world, but not for the world. 
We must fulfill our duties even with regard 
to temporal concerns, especially with refer¬ 
ence to those who may be dependent upon 
us; but we must fix our eyes upon a goal 
beyond the temporal and material. 

Our true home is not here. We are but 
passing through this world on a pilgrimage 
of war. The war is not against our fellows, 
though many make it precisely that. It is 
a war against our own unworthy inclina¬ 
tions, against the onsets of evil, against 
“the spirits of wickedness in the high 
places .’ 71 It is a war against the too great 
lure of riches and pleasures and honors. 
These last may be well enough in their place, 
provided our hearts are not altogether en¬ 
grossed with them. Yet these same riches 
and pleasures and honors are terribly dan¬ 
gerous because of their power to woo and 
win our poor, weak hearts to earth. 

We were not made for them. We were 
made for God and for the enjoyment of end- 

i Eplies. vi, 12. 


162 


MILESTONES 


less happiness in the heavenly home of our 
Father. That is our destiny, which we 
must work for and fight for and suffer for 
and, if need be, die for. Faith goes before 
us with the beacon of truth: holy fear of 
God’s just judgments will warn us away 
from the snare of danger and of evil: hope 
will urge us on with the appreciation of 
things which are of everlasting worth. 

As the sacred tomb of Christ was the 
blessed object which called the Crusaders 
across land and sea to battle in the heroism 
of a great cause, so should the home of the 
living Christ, waiting for us in His Father’s 
house where there are many mansions pre¬ 
pared for His loyal followers, call to us 
across the distance of earth from heaven, 
across the valley of the years reaching out 
to the immovable mountain of eternity. 
Therefore, as St. Paul urges us, “let us hold 
fast the confession of our hope without 
wavering, for he is faithful that hath prom¬ 
ised. . . . Do not therefore lose your con¬ 
fidence, which hath a great reward. For 
patience is necessary for you,” and it comes 


HOPE 


163 


from hope; “that, doing the will of God, 
you may receive the promise. For yet a 
little and a very little while, and he that is 
to come, will come, and will not delay. ’ ’ 1 

iHeb. X, 23, 35-37. 


CHAPTER V 


MARY—LOVE 

Faith with repentance, based on fear and hope, 
general and ordinary preparation for justifica¬ 
tion. Beginning of love already contained in 
this preparation. After this, life through 
sacrament. Extraordinary and particular econ¬ 
omy of grace brings sanctification by love of 
charity.—Man’s need of a friend; most of all, of 
a divine Friend. Charity founds this friend¬ 
ship.—Nature of charity: benevolence. Sublime 
in unselfishness, but not beyond us; easy. God’s 
gifts evoke gratitude and gratitude mounts to 
love. Christ’s call to hearts.—Mary, type of love 
of charity. Two scenes in her life as examples.— 
Effects: source of perfect sorrow; motive of great 
deeds for God and man; healing for wounds of 
world. 

When by faith one has entered the realm 
of the supernatural, when by fear of God’s 
just judgments and by hope in His infinite 
mercy one has been drawn away from the 
evil of transgression to the sacred mourning 
of repentance, he stands on the very border¬ 
land of life and all but touches salvation. 

164 


LOVE 165 

In a sense, his preparation for justification 
is complete. 

This preparation has been the subject 
matter of consideration in the foregoing 
chapters. In these chapters, however, there 
has been no formal treatment of love and 
of its effect. The Council of Trent, which 
has described for us the successive steps 
which lead to God, speaks of a certain begin¬ 
ning of the love of God as forming part of 
the ordinary preparation. For the Holy 
Synod says that, after faith has been con¬ 
ceived, the adult advances to repentance 
inasmuch as, understanding himself to be 
a sinner, he is struck with the holy fear of 
God’s judgments, but is lifted up to hope 
through the consideration of God’s merciful 
goodness, and begins to love God as the 
source of all justice and holiness. 1 But, 
this beginning of love is not necessarily the 
love of charity. It is usually part of that 
attrition which springs from the fear of hell 
and the hope of heaven. 

One who sorrows for his sin, even with 
attrition, really and truly detests his sin as 

i Denz. n. 798. 


166 


MILESTONES 


an offence against God and sincerely wishes 
to bring upon himself the propitious glance 
of his Father’s forgiveness: and this is a 
step towards the charity of God. He 
wishes to observe all the mandates of his 
sovereign Lord—all without exception, and 
therefore also the first and greatest of all 
commandments, “Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God”: and thus the love of God is his 
by desire and intention. He wishes to come 
to eternal life and hopes to attain to the en¬ 
joyment of his God: and most surely this is 
a beginning of the love of God. 

All this is part of the love of longing or 
desire, which theologians technically call 
“the love of concupiscence” without connot¬ 
ing the smallest degree of ‘ ‘ passion. ’ ’ Such 
a love craves the good things of God for 
man’s sake, it is true, but not to the exclu¬ 
sion of God, and without too much difficulty 
it may mount to a higher plane of unselfish 
affection towards the God who is not only 
our own highest good, but is absolute good¬ 
ness in Himself. 

Thus this sorrow for sin, which comes 
from fear and hope and all the while is 


LOVE 


167 


based upon blessed faith; this repentance, 
technically called attrition, in certain cir¬ 
cumstances is the last stage of the process 
of preparation for justification. In fact, 
for the adults whose case we are examining, 
it is God’s ordinary and general way of 
bringing men to Himself. 

For, at the presence of this faith and this 
repentance the sanctifying grace of God, 
which is the true life of the soul, comes to 
man through the Sacrament of Baptism in 
the first instance or through the Sacrament 
of Penance in the case of later defections 
from holiness. Christ has made these two 
sacraments the ordinary and general chan¬ 
nels of His grace of forgiveness. He has 
traced these two paths as the ones which 
lead to God. And if, through his own 
choice and his own fault, a man will not 
avail himself of these means fixed by the 
Savior and will not walk in the way marked 
out by Him, he can hope for nothing but the 
everlasting night of unforgiven sins and 
the unending death of separation from his 
God. 

Still, besides this general and ordinary 


168 MILESTONES 

providence, God has an extraordinary and 
particular economy of grace with regard to 
human souls. In certain circumstances and 
according to the dispositions of His good 
pleasure God will deal with the soul without 
the mediation of the sacraments—yet always 
with relation to them, since He does not 
contradict Himself. In such instances there 
is still another step of preparation in the 
way to life. For, where the uplifting of 
the penitent soul to the embrace of God is 
not effected by the sacrament, which is God’s 
ordinary way, it must be brought about by 
perfect contrition. This perfect contrition 
is the sorrow and detestation for sin as an 
offence against God, as all good in Himself 
and all worthy of our love: it is the grief 
which flows forth from charity or the love 
of God. 

So sacred is this love for God through 
charity, that at the very instant the sinner 
makes an act of it he is blessed with sancti- 
fying grace, as a consequence of which his 
sins are blotted out and he is linked to God 
by the holy bonds of friendship. God Him¬ 
self has told us so. We hear the words 


LOVE 


169 


which the dear Christ addressed to His 
loved ones at the Last Supper: “He that 
loveth me, shall be loved of my Father: and 
I will love him, and will manifest myself to 
him.” 1 From the disciple whom Jesus 
loved, who had leaned upon the breast of the 
Master and had drunk in love from the 
throbbing Sacred Heart, we learn that 
“every one that loveth, is born of God, and 
knoweth God”; 2 for “God is charity: and 
he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, 
and God in him.” 3 

Yes, love does bring us to God. The Su¬ 
preme Lord might have ordained otherwise, 
had He so chosen. There is no question 
here of absolute justice, whereby He must 
give His sanctifying grace to the one who, 
by His aid, makes an act of love; for, even 
the sacredness of charity does not offer to 
God an atonement equal to the dishonor of 
transgression. Yet, though He might have 
ordained otherwise, He has ordained things 
thus; and we can understand how befitting 
is this decree of His infinite love. 

1 John xiv. 21, 

2 I John iv, 27. 

* Id. iv, 1€, 


170 


MILESTONES 


As St. John Chrysostom says, “As fire, 
when it sweeps through a forest, wipes out 
everything in its path; so the burning heat 
of charity, when it falls upon a soul, bears 
all before it. . . . Where charity is, all evil 
is taken away.” 1 That is gloriously true. 
The evil of sin is burned away before the 
white heat of that fire which the Savior 
came to cast upon the earth; and up from 
the lower plane of the human the soul is 
rapt unto the divine—even unto friendship 
with its God. To such souls Christ says, 
as He said to the Apostles at the feast of 
love: “I will not now call you servants: 
for the servant knoweth not what his lord 
doth. But I have called you friends. ’ ’ 2 
Sacred friendship with God! We need 
the friendship of God. True, man is placed 
at the very apex of the material creations, 
lord of the things below and but a little 
less than the angels. Wonderful he is. 
As we marvel at the keenness of his sense 
perceptions, at his power of imagination, 
at his grasp of intellect, at his strength 

1 Horn. 7 in II Tim., n. 3. 

2 John xv, 15. 


LOVE 


171 


of free will, we may, perhaps, fancy that 
here is one who can stand alone, a mighty 
giant who can rely on self and who does not 
need the help of others. But that would be 
a sad error. 

With all his powers and all his capabilities 
man cannot stand alone. He needs many, 
many things; and among his most clamorous 
necessities is the need of a friend . He must 
have some one, knitted to his being by the 
bonds of love, who may share his efforts 
and their results. Without a friend he is 
in a woeful state. Even though he gain 
the object of heroic struggling, the prize is 
almost worthless, if there is no loved one 
with whom to share it. If sorrow and 
obloquy and failure come upon him and he 
has no friend to bear part of the burden, the 
weight of affliction will crush him to de¬ 
spair. And so, without a friend, whether in 
triumph or defeat, whether in success or 
failure, man is alone, and the solitariness 
will close in upon his spirit, will grow 
narrower and narrower, and will strangle 
his life in its killing clutches. 

No; man is not enough for himself. He 


172 


MILESTONES 


must have someone whom he may love and 
who will love him. But most of all, he 
Imust have his God who will love him and 
to whom his own craving heart may go out 
in love. The love of fellow mortals may 
mean much; but it is not enough to satisfy 
the human heart. 

The bygone races that have dropped into 
eternity looked in and beyond and above 
the world for some great one who had a care 
for them and was more than an iron despot 
or a cruel task master. He was there and 
He was loving them. But, because they 
sought without earnestness and without 
perseverance and hence missed the knowl¬ 
edge of the God w T ho loves, they gave free 
rein to passion in the disdain of indifference 
or the riot of despair. The degradation of 
their lives was a hopeless cry for a friend in 
the person of their God. 

That longing for perfect happiness which 
lies at the bottom of every human heart is 
the yearning, perhaps unconscious, for the 
only One who is all good. Our hearts are 
too big to be satisfied by anything less than 


LOVE 


173 


the infinite; and all the things of earth must 
fail to fill the void within us. Distracted as 
we are by the things of earth, we do not real¬ 
ize how much we need our Maker; but at 
times, in the midst of a crowded world, we 
feel a loneliness of soul which would crush 
us, if we did not have our God. Surely we 
must have felt it. Certainly we must have 
been placed in circumstances where earthly 
friends have dropped away; where it seemed 
as if in all the world there was no heart 
that beat for us, that we were outcasts from 
the whole human race, and that there was 
no one to lean upon but God. And has it 
ever happened that by reason of our own 
casting off of this Lover of ours we had 
lost even Him? Then truly we were on 
the cross, and the black clouds of desolation 
blocked the sunshine of peace: then we knew 
the bitterness of loneliness. If we ever get 
away from the distractions of earth, we shall 
realize often during life, and we shall realize 
better as death draws near, that we need our 
God and we need His friendship. “ With¬ 
out a friend thou canst not well live: and if 


174 


MILESTONES 


Jesus be not thy friend above all, thou wilt 
be exceeding sad and desolate.” 1 

By the love of charity this friendship is 
established between man and his Maker— 
friendship which implies mutual love, mu¬ 
tual knowledge of that love, mutual inter¬ 
change of goods, and a certain equality. 
Sacred beyond all expression is the commu¬ 
nication of love between God and man in 
their friendship. From the Lover divine to 
the creature of His love—all the gifts in the 
natural order of body and soul, all the more 
hallowed supernatural blessings of heavenly 
worth, together with the participation in the 
very nature of God through sanctifying 
grace! On the part of the lowly lover of 
the eternal Godhead, the external glory 
which comes from noblest loyalty and the 
affection which loves God for His own trans¬ 
cendent excellence! A blessed union, which 
may be perfected more and more as the span 
of life is lengthened and which will be 
crowned with unending glory, when the veil 
has been pierced and the light of faith has 
brightened into vision. 

i Imitation of Christ, Bk. ii, c. 8. 


LOVE 


175 


It will be of advantage to us to try to get a 
clearer understanding of this charity, which 
is so sublime. Our “act of charity,” which 
we make as we say our prayers, tells us what 
it is. Therein we say that we love God 
above all things with our whole heart and 
soul because He is infinitely worthy of love 
for His amiable and adorable perfections, 
and that we love our neighbor as ourselves 
for the love of God. So, charity is love; but 
it is love of the noblest and holiest kind. 

The reaching forth of our will towards 
good because it is good for us is a kind of 
love; but it is not charity. Charity goes 
forth towards good because it is good for the 
beloved: it is the love of benevolence; and 
the mutual love of benevolence is the love of 
friendship, which makes for the communi¬ 
cation of good things between those who 
greatly love. This charity towards God 
causes us to rejoice that He is all that He is, 
and makes us long to confer on Him the only 
good thing within the gift of our devoted¬ 
ness, namely, the right use of our own lib¬ 
erty according to the divine good pleasure 
and the bringing of others to the same loy- 


176 


MILESTONES 


alty, unto the greater honor and glory of 
God—and all for God’s sake. 

Charity looks away from the littleness of 
self and up to the transcendent excellence of 
God. It does not consider its own advan¬ 
tage, although it does cleave to God and does 
strive to attain unto the real presence and 
the actual enjoyment of the loved Lord. It 
urges the soul forward to possess and hold 
its friend; but this union of affection is the 
inmost heart of friendship and is desired 
above all things by the divine Beloved. It 
makes the soul long for God; yet the acme of 
the enjoyment of God is to love God for 
Himself as supremely good in Himself. 
True it is, indeed, that if God were not our 
supreme good and the object of our beati¬ 
tude, we could not love Him as the infinite 
God; but, he who loves with charity is not 
concerned with his own emolument. 

Still, for all that, charity shall not be 
without its reward. With deep insight into 
the secrets of charity St. Bernard says: 
“Not without reward is God loved, though 
He ought to be loved without regard to the 
reward. For true charity cannot be empty- 


LOVE 


177 


handed; yet it is not mercenary, since it does 
not seek its own. It is an affection, not a 
contract; it is not acquired by a compact, 
nor does it thus acquire. . . . True love is 
content with itself. It has a reward, but its 
reward is the object of its love,’’ 1 and that 
is God. 

Charity is splendid in its unselfishness, 
and it drew from the tender Heart of Jesus 
words of divine commendation. For, when 
speaking of His glorious ascension, He said 
to His Apostles: “If you loved me, you 
would indeed be glad, because I go to the 
Father.” 2 And so they would; for, the 
true lover rejoices at the good of his friend, 
even though it be, to a degree, his own loss. 
Christ also praised the charity which spurns 
itself for the advantage of the one whom it 
loves: i ‘ Greater love than this no man hath, 
that a man lay down his life for his 
friend.” 3 Nay, in the sweetest of all 
prayers, He taught us to think of our divine 
Beloved before we think of ourselves, and to 
say, “Hallowed be thy name,” before we 

1 De diligendo Deo c. 7, n. 17. 

2 John xiv, 28. 

3 John xv, 13. 


178 


MILESTONES 


pray for our own needs with the pleading 
petition, “Give us this day our daily bread 
and forgive us our trespasses. ’ * 

There can be no doubt about the splendid 
unselfishness of this charity. To some, the 
very glory of this unselfishness of charity 
seems to point to its unattainableness as 
something altogether superhuman. How¬ 
ever, it is not beyond the power of the 
human will strengthened by God’s blessed 
grace. 

In fact, if we will but look, we see unself¬ 
ish love all about us. A mother’s love is 
proverbial for its forgetfulness of self. 
Unfortunately it cannot be said that the love 
of every mother is such; for there are some 
who are so wrapped up with fashion or folly 
and with the entanglements of selfish ambi¬ 
tion, that they never get out of their mean 
and little selves. But, a true mother will 
labor for her loved ones; she will suffer for 
them; if need be, she will starve for them. 
Through the darkness of the weary night she 
will hover near the sick-bed, praying in the 
gray dawn for the object of her devotion; 
she will be forgetful of rest, of food, of 


LOVE 


179 


all save the pale, pinched face upon the 
pillow. Fatigue and anxiety may write 
their story in the dark lines beneath her own 
eyes and in the strained look upon her own 
features; but the story is that of the unself¬ 
ishness of true love. 

The love of a real friend is likewise free 
from the littleness of selfishness. The de¬ 
votion of a true patriot looks beyond his own 
advantage to the welfare of his country. 
The loyalty of every great soul to a noble 
ideal reaches out beyond the confines of 
egotism to the object of his love. And so, 
too, when there is question of loving God for 
Himself, it is not at all beyond our power to 
look away from self and up to Him. 

Again, our ability to compass this noble 
love for God is patent from the fact that this 
very love is commanded by God Himself. 
Now, God may and does demand high things, 
but never what is impossible. And His 
mandate is that we should love the Lord our 
God with our whole heart and soul and with 
all our strength and with all our mind. 1 
And such love is the love of charity, whereby 

iCf. Luke x, 27; Deut. vi, 5. 


180 


MILESTONES 


we must love God even though there should 
be no other cause for our affection in His re¬ 
gard than this, that He is the Lord our God. 

Another reason why this love of God for 
His own sake is not beyond us is, that it is 
not required that this yearning for God 
should exist in the highest degree of inten¬ 
sity. That were impossible. Besides, the 
required degree could never be determined 
nor could it ever remain constant. The 
glow of charity may be increased all through 
our days, and, please God! it will be, as it 
was in the hearts of God’s saints whom we 
are to emulate. Still, the degree of inten¬ 
sity does not fall within the command to 
love: it is the deliberate appreciation of 
God’s supreme goodness before all things 
that must always be in our inmost heart. 

Furthermore, the love of God for His own 
sake does not exclude from our souls any 
and all thought of self. It only means that 
we must go beyond self and must reach up to 
Him. We must love God for our own sake; 
we are obliged to tend to Him with the love 
of desire. Why? Because we must hope 
in Him; and hope is nothing more nor less 


LOVE 


181 


than love for God because He is good to us. 
Hence, to think of excluding the considera¬ 
tion of our own true advantage from our 
love of God for His own blessed self would 
be to weigh the possibility of having true 
charity for God without hope in Him. And 
that were as senseless as to imagine that we 
could have either hope or charity without 
the faith which is the foundation of all else. 
No; God is, and wills to be, at once our own 
highest good and supremely good in Him¬ 
self : and therefore we may and we must love 
Him under both aspects. The one love is 
hope; the other, charity. Both are bound 
together to the advantage of ourselves and 
to the everlasting glory of God. 

Not only is this love of charity not beyond 
the power of our soul, aided by the grace of 
God; it is also comparatively easy. Surely 
it is quite in accord with genuine nobility of 
heart to love those who have showered bene¬ 
fits upon us. And without doubt God has 
done that: He is our greatest benefactor. 
The thought of His countless gifts makes it 
easy for us to entertain towards Him deep 
sentiments of gratitude; and from the ful- 


182 


MILESTONES 


ness of gratitude up to the height of the love 
of charity is a step both easy and natural. 

He gave us all that we have and all that 
we are; and He gave it to us out of the 
depths of His infinite longing for our near¬ 
ness and our love. This old earth with its 
beauty and grandeur is a part of His prodi¬ 
gality. With its wealth of things material, 
with its beauty of hill and valley and forest 
and stream and mountain peaks and bound¬ 
less ocean, it is only the possession, the joy, 
the passing home of the ruler of the material 
creation. In man himself every faculty of 
soul and body is not only a reason for his 
service of the Lord God; each of them is, 
as well, a love token from the great Lover 
of mankind. 

That is the mystery which is back of so 
many others—God’s love for us. Forever 
and forever God was infinitely happy in the 
eternal joy of being, that is Himself. He 
needed no creature’s love; for, such love 
could add nothing to His own infinite satis¬ 
faction in Himself. Yet, though He needed 
not the love of man, He longed for it, as no 
human heart ever hungered for human love. 


LOVE 


183 


And out of the abyss of nothingness His 
almighty fiat called forth the world of men, 
that He might love them and that they might 
love Him. Do we prize our lives and our 
faculties and our capabilities for action 
and for accomplishment ? Then, our hearts 
fiiust grow big with gratitude towards our 
God who gave us ourselves. 

The gifts of nature were enough and more 
than enough for man: they were not enough 
for the immensity of the overwhelming love 
with which God cherished His dear ones. 
With their natural powers and with their 
natural destiny men were not near enough to 
the boundless affection of the Eternal; for, 
they could never come nearer to Him than 
servants or slaves can approach their mas¬ 
ter. So, the great Lover lifted them up to 
His own divine life. He gave them the sanc¬ 
tifying grace which made them partakers of 
His own nature, with the destiny of looking 
face to face upon the unveiled splendor of 
the Deity in the knowledge which belongs 
to the Godhead. Theirs was to be the heri¬ 
tage of children, and not the portion of mere 
servants who are paid their dole for service. 


184 


MILESTONES 


Do we value the glorious destiny which is 
to be ours, provided we are faithful to our 
Father? Do we esteem the measureless 
happiness which is kept for us in the home 
where there are many mansions for the sons 
and daughters of God? Then again, our 
hearts must go out to Him who has so loved 
us. 

When the gift of God was spurned by the 
unfaithfulness of our guilty first parents; 
when, by our own repeated personal trans¬ 
gressions, destruction was made damnation 
doubly damned; He would not let us go, but 
He gave Himself for us. “God so loved the 
world, as to give his only begotten Son ”; 1 
and that Son of God loved us and delivered 
Himself for us . 2 Here, of a truth, was the 
greatest gift of all. 

From the gifts of God which call for 
gratitude, it is not hard to rise higher, if 
we will but think seriously. Can we be so 
dull and so senseless as to be satisfied merely 
with having, and give never a thought to 
the source of our blessings? That were 

iJohn iii, 16. 

2 Cf. Ephes. v, 2. 


LOVE 


185 


disgracefully unworthy of the nobility of 
the nature which God has given us. Rather, 
we should mount up from the gifts of the 
Lover to the love of the Giver. We should 
find in His favors, which are only the cover¬ 
ings of His affection for us, the throbbing 
love which showered them upon us; and we 
should love that goodness for itself. And 
that is the love of charity. 

When we look to the love of Christ, who 
became our Brother and our Victim, we are 
harder than flint, if we do not burn with love 
for Him, not only for what He has done for 
us, but for what He is in Himself. And 
that, too, is the love of charity. 

Yes, if creation should make us love God, 
what of redemption ? In the first, God gave 
us ourselves; in the second, He gave us Him¬ 
self. He bought us back from doom—and 
at what a cost! It cost Him all that men 
hold dear. It cost Him the life of poverty 
and obscurity and weariness and labor and 
suffering which stretched from the hard 
crib of Bethlehem to the harder cross of 
Calvary. We can sound the depths of the 
soundless sea more easily than we can 


186 


MILESTONES 


measure the greatness of His all-sacrificing 
love. It is as broad as heaven and as vast 
as the starry depths. We cannot begin to 
grasp its fulness, until we can count each 
sigh of His infancy and each longing of 
His exile; until we can reckon each throb¬ 
bing pulsation of His heart through the 
barren days of His ministry and the awful 
hours of His abandonment; until we can 
number each drop of His precious blood, 
that trickled from His anguished body in 
Gethsemani, that spurted from His torn 
veins in the scourging and the crowning 
with thorns, that flowed from His pierced 
hands and feet upon the reddened rood, even 
to the last drop that oozed from His riven 
heart as the soldier’s spear opened His 
sacred side. For, the burden of the message 
of each of these is, “He loved me and deliv¬ 
ered himself for me.” 1 
Oh, that blessed, loving, lovable, Incarnate 
God of ours! He took our human nature 
upon Himself and became flesh of our flesh 
and bone of our bone. This He did, not 
only that He might offer up atonement for 

i Gal. ii, 20. 


LOVE 


187 


us, but also that the loveliness and goodness 
of the invisible Godhead might be placed 
before us in visible' form and might woo our 
hard hearts to love. As we ponder on His 
endless love for us, can we be mean enough 
to keep our eyes forever fixed upon our little 
selves and think only of our own advantage ? 
Shall we not rather look at His goodness 
as shown forth in His longing for us and 
give Him all the love of our poor souls? 
From creatures to God, and, most of all, 
from the beneficence of our divine Redeemer 
and Lover to the love of the Father and the 
Holy Spirit—this is the way to charity di¬ 
vine. 

And it becomes all the easier when we 
realize that this love of God for us is not 
a something that is past and gone, not a 
something vague and impersonal, but ever 
thrillingly present and wondrously personal. 
We are in the very arms of our Father, 
who is with us in His omnipresence and 
guards us by His special providence. The 
dear Christ has not lost thought for us; but, 
at the right hand of the Father, He is for¬ 
ever making intercession for us, and, in the 


188 


MILESTONES 


tabernacle, He abides with us day and night, 
pleading for His brothers and sisters, even 
when they (God help them!) are forgetful 
of His undying love. Oh, if the truth and 
beauty and goodness and love of earth can 
hold these hearts of ours as they can and 
do, why, in love’s name, cannot the infinite 
truth and beauty and goodness and love of 
our God lift us out of ourselves and make 
us more w T orthy of Him! 

It will make us more worthy of Him, if 
we come to love Him; for, charity is the 
noblest of all the virtues. It is inseparably 
united with the sanctifying grace of God, 
and, thus united, is the very soul of noble 
endeavor and the principle of supernatural 
merit in the sight of God. It will last for¬ 
ever as the spirit which belongs not only to 
earth, but to the kingdom of God’s blissful 
glory, almost the atmosphere of our heav¬ 
enly country. 

Charity, then, is the most sacred source 
of repentance, the hallowed font of sorrow¬ 
ing love. Besides, it is the glorious heritage 
of the children of God through all their 


LOVE 189 

days here below and through the endless 
ages of eternity. 

And what type shall we take to show 
forth the grandeur of this glowing charity ? 
Surely the type should be superb, since char¬ 
ity is the splendid crown of all the other 
virtues. And such a type we have, a type 
that is the noblest of all the sacred figures 
as well of God’s old dispensation as of the 
new. We find this type in one who is “the 
glory of Jerusalem and the joy of Israel ”; 1 
in one who unites the great things of both 
testaments—in the ever Blessed Virgin 
Mary, Mother of God. 

She is the refulgent exemplar of all holi¬ 
ness. In an especial manner, too, she is 
the model of the love of charity for God and 
man. It must be confessed, there is a strong 
temptation to enlarge upon the considera¬ 
tion of her wonderful prerogatives and upon 
the unexampled pattern of all sacredness 
-Which she shows to the world. Yet, though 
her children’s love for her would be a valid 
reason for a fuller treatment of this con- 


i Judith xv, 10. 


190 


MILESTONES 


genial theme, the necessity of not curtailing 
some other apposite reflections enforces the 
call for brevity. Hence, we can do no more 
than look upon one or tw.o instances in her 
blessed life, which gleam with the brightness 
of this holy love. 

From the very first instant of her life her 
soul was flooded with the sanctifying grace 
of God, which always has with it the virtue 
of supernatural charity, and she was the 
Immaculate one. According to the designs 
of God and the capacity of her favored soul, 
she was “full of grace’’ and full of charity 
divine, even from that early dawn of her 
earthly career; and both grace and charity 
grew constantly during all the conscious 
moments of the life of the little Maid of 
Nazareth. 

Oh, the beauty of Mary’s grace-flooded, 
love-consumed soul, as the angel stood be¬ 
fore her with the message of the Incarna¬ 
tion ! 1 The greatness of Rome, with its 
pomp of power and its magnificence of 
empire, could not win the angel’s regard. 
Jerusalem, with its gorgeous temple and 

'i Cf. Luke i, 26-38. 


LOVE 


191 


gleaming palaces, he passed by. It was to 
the little maid of despised Nazareth that 
he came. After his salutation and his re¬ 
assurance of her favor with God, he told her 
that she was to conceive and to bring forth 
a Son, the Only-Begotten of the Father 
before time began, that she was destined 
by the Most High to be the Mother of God. 

And then the angel waited for the answer 
that she would give. All the world waited 
for that answer. The great God Himself 
waited for it. For, God would not force 
the will of His beloved: He would have no 
consent from her but one that was alto¬ 
gether free. Now, it was only her heroic 
love for God and man that made her consent 
to accept the stupendous dignity that was 
offered to her. 

Does this statement sound strange ? It is 
strange only to the ears of thoughtlessness. 
For, what would that consent mean? It 
would indeed mean that she would become 
the Mother of God. Yes; but the Mother 
of the Man of sorrows, the Mother of 
the Victim of the world. And it seems to 
me that she knew all this. She knew the 


192 


MILESTONES 


Scriptures with a penetrating knowledge 
such as no other mere mortal ever had. 
Moreover, it appears to be beyond all doubt 
that God laid bare before her gaze whatever 
the future held in her regard. His very 
love often makes our tender Lord hide the 
future from the weakness of such as we are: 
it was not necessary for Him to hide it from 
“the valiant woman” that Mary was. 

And so, I think, she knew that her consent 
would bring the sweet days of the tenderness 
of Bethlehem and Nazareth, but would lead 
her to the horrors of the crushing sorrow 
of Calvary. She knew that she would hold 
the Baby Christ in her arms and that she 
could call Him all her own; but, that she 
would one day stand beneath the blood¬ 
stained cross and see her Son expire. So, 
it was with the heroism of martyr-love for 
God and man that she said in words soft as 
angel music: “Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord; be it done to me according to thy 
word.” 1 And those words sound strangely 
like the words which forced themselves from 
the pale and trembling lips of the Christ in 

iV. 38. 


LOVE 


193 


the shadows of Gethsemani, 4 4 Father . . . 
not my will, but thine be done .” 1 Yes, it 
was the sublimity of love that made Mary 
speak the fiat of her humility, which was 
answered by the fiat of God’s omnipotence— 
“and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
amongst us.” 2 

And now we pass across the stretch of 
years which hold the story of unselfish love 
and we stand with Mary, where she had 
stood in vision when she spoke to the angel 
the words of love’s submission. We stand 
with her at the foot of the cross of the dying 
Savior. She was with Him at the begin¬ 
ning of His mortal career: she is with Him 
at the consummation of the work which the 
Father had given Him to do; for, love unites 
her always with the Victim of mankind. 
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his 
mother. ’ ’ 3 

She knows the bitterness of the sacrifice 
which she has to offer; and it is love that 
makes her stronger than the sharpness of 
the sword of sorrow which pierces her very 

1 Luke xxii, 42. 

2 John i, 14. 

3 John xix, 26. 



194 


MILESTONES 


soul. Through the blackness of the unnat¬ 
ural night which has settled down on Gol¬ 
gotha, she gazes on that suffering form 
nailed to hard wood. Those eyes of His, 
filled with tears and clotted blood, once 
looked into her own with the smiles of child¬ 
hood in the days gone by. That thorn- 
crowned head was often pillowed upon her 
breast. Those torn hands had often ca¬ 
ressed her cheeks in the hours of Bethlehem 
and Egypt and Nazareth. Those parched 
and bruised lips, all swollen and bleeding, 
had called her by the sweet and endearing 
name of “Mother.’’ 

Oh, Father of mercy! why had men hated 
Him so? Why had they made Him so 
pitiable an object, that it requires all a 
mother’s love to pierce the veil and to see in 
that mangled form the one who was 4 “ beau¬ 
tiful above the sons of men”? 1 

She hears His words of love and mercy 
for all. She is given to the disciple whom 
Jesus loves. She tastes the unspeakable 
bitterness of the fearful agony which wrings 
from the desolate soul of the dying Christ 

i Ps. xliv, 3. 


LOVE 


195 


the most awful words of those awful hours, 
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
mef ’ 1 She sees the thorn-crowned head 
sink forward on the gashed breast, as the 
great High Priest of mankind offers up the 
sacrifice which redeems the world. And 
there at the foot of the cross she rises to the 
sublimity of more than martyr heroism, and 
she offers her Son to the Father for the 
satisfaction of divine justice and for the 
reconciliation of mankind with God. 

And the shadows deepen and all is still. 
In the darkness beneath the cross we see 
a broken-hearted mother holding in her 
arms the lifeless body which has been rever¬ 
ently taken down from the blood-soaked 
rood. She is the Queen of Martyrs. And 
through the black gloom of Calvary there 
gleams the glory of the love for God and 
man that is stronger than death. 

In view of the appealing force of the 
Blessed Mother’s example of all-embracing 
love, there is little need to dwell in special 
detail upon the effects which charity accom¬ 
plishes and little need to urge the faithful 


i Matt, xxvii, 4€. 


196 


MILESTONES 


servants of God to its holy practice. In 
Mary this charity did not, indeed, turn to 
sorrow for her sins against God; for, sin 
had no part in her blessed life. Conceived 
immaculate, she bore the robe of innocence 
unspotted even to the day when God took 
her home in the ravishing glory of her 
Assumption. With us, however, the love 
of charity may be (and God grant it will 
be!) the source of a contrition which will 
abide with us all through the days of our 
pilgrimage; for we who have sinned should 
forever live in the peaceful shade of loving 
sorrow and sorrowing love. Yet, apart 
from its relation to the sins of the past, the 
love of charity ought to rule all our dealings 
with God and with our fellowmen. 

As to God, charity will make us give to 
Him the holocaust of loyal service and 
devotedness. It w T ill keep us from the trea¬ 
son of mortal sin. It will clarify and rectify 
our view with regard to venial transgres¬ 
sions and will make us deem them despicable 
failings from duty, as they are, and not mere 
peccadilloes, as the thoughtless consider 
them to be. After all, this avoidance of sin, 


LOVE 


197 


mortal and venial, is the true sign and test 
of love, as the God-Man told us when He 
said: “If you love me, keep my command¬ 
ments.” 1 

Yes, if we love Him, we shall not be 
guilty of the base ingratitude, the mad folly, 
the unspeakable degradation, which prefers 
an unjust gain, an ill-bought honor, a vicious 
lustful satisfaction to the good pleasure of 
the great God who is worthy of all love 
for His amiable and adorable perfections. 
This loyalty of service is the essence of the 
true love of God which will ever grow until 
we come to be no strangers before His 
throne of majesty in heaven or before the 
throne of His lowly mercy in the tabernacle; 
until we think of our dear God and for Him; 
until His interests have become our inter¬ 
ests, and each of us can say with St. Paul, 
“I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in 
me.” 2 

As for our fellowmen, charity will make 
us love them “in deed, and in truth.” 3 To 
do no more than to sketch the application 

1 John xiv, 15. 

2 Gal. ii, 20. 

3 I John iii, 18. 


198 


MILESTONES 


of the love of charity for our fellows would 
take too long, since it would be to outline 
a life of noble heroism, which would make 
all things right. For, “he that loveth his 
neighbor, hath fulfilled the law” 1 of loving 
God above all things and his neighbor as 
himself. Charity will safeguard the rights 
of justice and will go beyond all this with 
the sweetness of love. It will concern itself 
with the spiritual welfare of the neighbor 
and with the material betterment of the lot 
of those who are in distress—and all this 
according to the capabilities and the oppor¬ 
tunities of each. It will go out to social 
service, which is a cold and heartless thing 
of scientific lifelessness until charity has 
breathed its spirit into the dead bones. It 
will make each one remember that he is his 
brother’s or his sister’s keeper. 

In the preceding chapters reference has 
been made to the terrible evils which were 
decimating the earth such a short while ago 
and which are working their dreadful re¬ 
sults to-day. These evils are terrifying and 
heart-breaking. But, they would all dis- 

i Rom. xiii, 8. 


LOVE 


199 


appear, if charity would reign in the souls 
of men. Peace was longed for in war; but 
peace, deep and true and lasting, was not 
obtained when the cannons stopped roaring 
and the shrapnel shells ceased shrieking. 
Such peace must be built on charity. For, 
the Prince of peace, who came to bring men 
the peace which the world cannot give, 
built the stones of the sacred temple of 
peace upon the foundation of love; and it 
can have no other sound basis. 

In his first encyclical, at the beginning 
of the great war, Benedict XV looked be¬ 
neath the surface of things and saw the 
source of the evils which were laying waste 
the world; and he told men of the four great 
wrongs which were, and are, killing society: 
namely, the growing coldness of men to men 
and to God and the dying out of charity; 
contempt for authority; antagonism be¬ 
tween the classes; and the unbridled desire 
for temporal goods. The first in order of 
these causes of disorder is the lack of char¬ 
ity; and from this cause flow, in great 
measure, the other three. For, exaggerated 
self-love, which waxes strong from the de- 


200 


MILESTONES 


crease of charity, leads to the false indepen¬ 
dence which throws defiance in the face of 
authority; false independence and self- 
centered egoism lead to the clash between 
the classes, which, after forgetting the char¬ 
ity due to the children of God, scorns the 
just rights of human nature; and the cut¬ 
ting away from the love for God and for 
the dear ones of God lets men sink down into 
the baseness that can see no farther than 
the horizon of time and can cherish only 
those goods which are of the earth earthy. 
And thus, the entire loss or the cooling down 
of charity is only too truly the beginning 
of all evils. 

God help the world! There is more than 
enough of mawkish sentimentality. There 
is a full supply of interested regard 
for others because of personal advantage. 
There is a gruesome riot of the jungle-love 
of human beasts. But, the true wishing 
well to others as to God’s children, the pro¬ 
curing for them of the good things which 
will stand the test of fire and will endure 
unto everlasting—this real Christ-like 


LOVE 


201 


charity does not burn with the warmth 
which the loving heart of the Savior longs 
for. 

And what is the way out of the abyss? 
There is but one which will be of real and 
lasting worth—and that is the way of Chris¬ 
tian charity. Therefore, let us hearken to 
the voice of Peter, ever sounding in the ears 
of men. Let us listen to the voice that has 
been silenced by death, but which still 
speaks across the borderland, the voice of 
the beloved Pius X, whose motto and whose 
aim was “To renew all things in Christ!” 
Let us give ear to that other voice that is 
stilled, that of Benedict XV, who wished the 
special mark of his war-saddened pontificate 
to be “to make the charity of Jesus Christ 
reign anew amongst men.” Let us do what 
we can to bring about the realization of the 
hope that glows ardent in the zealous soul 
of Pius XI, now gloriously reigning; for, 
his hope is the same as that of his two 
revered predecessors. 

This is an object worthy of the noblest 
efforts of the noblest souls. It is the object 


202 


MILESTONES 


which we should do our utmost best to 
further for our own true good, for the real 
welfare of our fellowmen, and for the ever¬ 
lasting glory of the God of love. 


CHAPTER YI 


THE SYNAGOGUE—THE CHURCH 

Purpose of considerations recalled: for others; for 
selves. All our sufficiency from Christ: no one 
ever saved without Him. “Economy of prepara¬ 
tion’ ’ and “economy of realization”: also two 
phases of faith in Christ: the Synagogue and the 
Church.—Church of Old Law, type. Law of 
nature. Falling away of nations. God’s provi¬ 
dence, preparing for Mosaic Law.—The Syna¬ 
gogue. Its character: nation and church: power 
of teaching, sanctifying, ruling. Its history: its 
limitations.—Church of New Law, realization. 
Institution. Nature: its mission. Marks. 
Identification: Catholic Church. Necessity of 
Church. Achievements.—Application and con¬ 
clusion. 

In the foregoing chapters we have studied 
the dispositions which, in adults, are pre¬ 
paratory to the justification which con¬ 
stitutes holiness and the true life of the soul. 
If, as it is to he hoped we have done, we have 
hallowed our considerations with humble 
prayer, the truths upon which we have 

203 


204 


MILESTONES 


dwelt have gone down into the depths of our 
souls. Then and only then can they actively 
influence our own lives in all details, even 
the smallest. That they should thus effec¬ 
tively work to the good of souls is the 
ambition which should have animated us 
from the beginning. For, our purpose was 
not merely speculative. It was intensely 
practical, since it was to grasp the ways of 
God in man’s regard. 

If this grasp of the ways of God has been 
attained, we shall be able in our humble way 
to help those of our fellows who are less 
blessed than we are and to bring them nearer 
to the Kingdom of God, whilst, at the same 
time, we ourselves will be aided in keeping 
near to God and in coming ever closer to 
Him. For, it must never be forgotten that 
the same dispositions which prepare the 
soul to come to God and to share in His 
divine life keep the soul near to Him and 
hold it fast in the bonds of holy friend¬ 
ship. 

We know that all our sufficiency is from 
God and that all hope of salvation is from 
Jesus Christ. From the day when the first 


THE CHURCH 


205 


sin broke the harmony of God’s world and 
crossed the designs of divine love, the one 
means of reinstatement in the glory which 
was lost has ever been the application of the 
merits of Christ the Redeemer—and we 
have studied the manner of preparation for 
that application. 

No one has ever come to salvation save 
through the Christ. No one has ever ob¬ 
tained the sanctifying grace of God except 
by union with Jesus. And, in God’s ordi¬ 
nary providence, no adult has ever attained 
to this union of grace with the Redeemer 
save along the pathway where lie the Mile¬ 
stones on the Way to Life. Christ has been 
the object of at least the implicit faith and 
worship of all those who from the beginning 
have had part with God: He is and will be 
the same with regard to all those who will 
have part with Him until time broadens out 
into eternity. 

Whether in the economy of preparation 
and type or in the economy of perfection 
and realization no one could or can be 
united with Christ the Redeemer without 
at least implicit faith in Him. These terms, 


206 


MILESTONES 


“the economy of preparation” and “the 
economy of realization,” bring us to the 
subject of the present chapter. 

It might, indeed, appear that the preced¬ 
ing chapters have rounded out the circle of 
our inquiries and that the purpose contem¬ 
plated at the outset has been accomplished. 
For, we have studied the qualities that lead 
one to the divine life of which sanctifying 
grace is the principle, the very soul. These 
are: first of all, faith; and then the repent¬ 
ance which springs from holy fear of God’s 
just judgments, from hope in His loving 
kindness, from at least the beginning of love, 
or, better still, from the flaming affection 
of charity. These are the Milestones on 
the Way to Life, and with the consideration 
of them our work would seem to be com¬ 
pleted. 

However, there is yet another series of re¬ 
flections to be made. As types of the dispo¬ 
sitions of soul which lead to the life of grace 
we have taken characters from the Old Tes¬ 
tament. And well we might; for, the whole 
of the former dispensation of God was a 
figure and a type of what was to be. In the 


THE CHURCH 


207 


Epistle to the Hebrews the inspired writer, 
after speaking of the temple and the ceremo¬ 
nies and the priesthood of the days of old, 
says that all this was a type of Christ’s 
priesthood and of its effects: “which is a 
parable of the time present.” 1 So it was: 
in fact, the whole of the Old prefigured the 
New. And, therefore, in conclusion it will 
he advisable, as well as helpful, to consider 
the Synagogue and the Church, type and 
antitype. The Synagogue belongs to “the 
economy of preparation”; it is the summary 
of the Old Testament, from which the types 
were taken in our past reflections. The 
Church pertains to “the economy of realiza¬ 
tion”; it is the treasure-house of the divine 
life to which one is brought by way of the 
preparatory dispositions that were studied 
in the preceding chapters. 

These same terms, “the economy of prep¬ 
aration” and “the economy of realiza¬ 
tion,” also point to the two phases of faith 
with regard to Christ, namely, faith in the 
Redeemer promised and faith in the Re¬ 
deemer who has come. Before Christ’s ad- 


iHeb. ix, 9. 


208 


MILESTONES 


vent, faith in Him “who was to be sent” 1 
was the foundation of all. Upon this faith 
sacrifices and ceremonial and institutions 
were built. 'Yet then all looked to the 
future. All was a type of what was to he: 
all was a guide, a pedagogue leading to the 
Christ who was to come: all was a shadow of 
the great reality, a prophecy that was to be 
fulfilled, a harbinger of a better hope: “for 
the law brought nothing to perfection, but a 
bringing in of a better hope, by which we 
draw nigh to God .” 2 In a word, all that 
made for uprightness and supernatural holi¬ 
ness had value from the future merits of 
Jesus Christ, the one and only Redeemer of 
a perishing race: 

Then as at all times, then as well as after 
Christ’s coming, the people of God was 
made up of all those, and only those, tending 
to God by the true faith and by the true wor¬ 
ship of the Most High. Now, what was and 
what’ is the true worship of God, offered to 
the Lord by those who are united to Him by 
blessed faith? The answer is that before 

1 Gen. xlix, 10. 

2 Heb. vii, 19. 


THE CHURCH 


209 


the coming of Christ the true worship of 
God was found in the Church of the Old 
Law, and after His advent, in the Church 
of Jesus Christ. 

In a wide sense, the Church of God at any 
period may be said to be the gathering to¬ 
gether of all who are united by the true faith 
and the true supernatural worship of God, 
and who are thus bound to one another and 
to God. In every stage of the Church of 
God there must be some teaching power, 
some ministerial rites of sanctification, some 
ruling in the realm of the soul. For, with¬ 
out these God’s faithful ones are not bound 
together into one body or association; and, 
unless there be such a gathering together, 
there can be no church, even in the widest 
meaning of the term, since the very word, 
church or ecclesia, denotes a collection or 
unity of such as are called by God. Besides, 
the greater the unity and perpetuity and 
holiness of these elements of teaching and 
sanctifying and ruling, the more perfect will 
be the form of the Church of God on earth. 

Before Moses received from the Almighty 
the Law, which bound God’s chosen people 


210 


MILESTONES 


into a politico-religious unity, there was no 
positive divine law, holding men together in 
a religious society, possessed of determined 
sacrifices and sanctifying rites. In those 
olden days of the gray long ago men were 
under what has been called “the law of 
nature,’’ and they were bound only by such 
obligations as flowed forth from the natural 
relations of man with God and from the 
supernatural destiny to which man had been 
elevated. 

Still, even then, in a vague way, the future 
more excellent union of God’s chosen ones 
was already prefigured. For, from the be¬ 
ginning, in the holy patriarchs of the race 
and the faithful ones of God there were 
found those who held to the true faith and 
the true worship of God. Sacrifice and 
ritual worship, in general, were ordained of 
God and were practised by His loyal sub¬ 
jects ; but God had not as yet prescribed any 
special form for these sacrifices and rites. 
The teaching power was practically confined 
to perpetual tradition with the helping min¬ 
istry of the patriarchs, aided at times by the 
extraordinary mission of the prophets. 


THE CHURCH 


211 


But, as yet there was no real external organ¬ 
ization of God’s children into a religious 
society . 1 

As we look at those long years of spiritual 
famine, do we appreciate, as we should, the 
blessed abundance in which God has cast our 
lives ? In those far distant days men had a 
sufficiency of God’s grace to be loyal to faith 
and to lead lives of true worship and of 
prayerful sanctification. But they did not 
have, as we have, the overflowing super¬ 
abundance of God’s beneficence. 

And, more’s the pity, they did not corre¬ 
spond with what they had. I am not judg¬ 
ing them: their lives speak judgment upon 
them, and in some instances the wrath of 
God thundered forth the condemnation of 
their infidelity. Faith? Worship? Oh, 
the sad, sad story of a wandering race! 
They fell away into the darkness of idola¬ 
trous superstition. They revelled in filthy 
rites to their defiled divinities. Almost uni¬ 
versally they lost the knowledge of the one 
true God and groped in the black depths of 

i Cf. Pesch, Preelectionea Dogmatieae, v. n. 452; Franzelin, 
De Eccl. Th. 2, 3. 


212 


MILESTONES 


polytheism. And the stench of their moral 
degradation rose up to an angered heaven to 
call down the vengeance of an outraged God. 

Then the love of the Father of mercy set 
aside one people as His own, in order to keep 
alive among men the true knowledge of God 
and the promise of Him who was to be sent 
as a Redeemer. God made this one people 
His own specially beloved by His pact with 
Abraham, the father of all believers. He 
repeated His promises to the other patri¬ 
archs—preparing the way for the Mosaic 
Law. 

From on high there came a new hope to 
the Israelites, oppressed, persecuted, and 
harassed by the Egyptians. Moses was 
commissioned to lead them out of the house 
of bondage and into the land which the Lord 
would give to them . 1 In the might of heaven 
this divinely appointed leader broke down 
the proud opposition of Pharaoh and led 
God’s chosen people on 2 —across the Red 
Sea , 3 across the desert with its terrors. 

1 Cf. Exod. vi, 13; vii, 1-6. 

2 Cf. Exod. vii-xii. 

s Cf. Exod. xiv, 21, 22, 29. 


THE CHURCH 


213 


With manna from heaven he fed them , 1 he 
refreshed them with water from the rock ; 2 
he healed them from the burning death of 
the serpents’ sting . 3 And then, in the midst 
of the crashing roar of thunder and the 
blinding flash of lightning around the moun¬ 
tain of Sinai—the terror-stricken people 
huddling the while at the smoking base of 
the hill—Moses received from the Almighty 
the Law, with its moral precepts, its ceremo¬ 
nial rites, and its disciplinary enactments . 4 
And the Synagogue was born and began the 
life which was to lead on to the Christ and 
His work. 

The Synagogue was a nation and a church. 
It was a society at once religious and civil. 
But, our concern with it goes only as far as 
its religious aspect. It was, for that time, 
the Church of God for His chosen people— 
and it was holy and sacred. True, it was 
not resplendent with the sacredness of that 
which it typified. Yet, in the spirit of its 

1 Cf. Exod. xvi, 4, 35. 

2 Cf. Exod. xvii, 1, 5, 6. 

3 Cf. Num. xxi, 6, 9. 

4 Cf. Exod. xx if. 


i 



214 


MILESTONES 


institution, it was not the worthless thing 
which rationalists and infidels make it out 
to have been; nor was it the helpless formal¬ 
ism which is described by others who seem to 
think that the best way to extol the grandeur 
of God’s sweetest dispensation of love, the 
New Testament, is to decry the Church of 
the Law. 

The threefold power of sanctifying and 
ruling and authoritatively teaching was 
given to the Synagogue. The worship of 
the Most High was determined in sacrifices, 
in sanctifying rites, in ceremonies and 
solemnities. At first a tabernacle was the 
only temple; yet it was the abode of the God¬ 
head. And, in order that the visible unity 
of the Church of Israel might be preserved, 
the public and solemn sacrificial worship of 
Jahve was to be offered in one only temple, 
whether tabernacle or gorgeous pile . 1 

Priests were instituted in hierarchical 
gradation, as the ministers of this holy wor¬ 
ship; and these priests were to judge the 
people and to rule them in the things that 
appertained to God. And with the power 

i Cf. Franzelin 1. c. 


THE CHURCH 


215 


of ruling in the realm of the soul there was 
the power of guarding the revelation of God. 
The ordinary charge of the priestly minis¬ 
ters of the Law did not include the power of 
infallible declaration of the word of God. 
That revelation itself was to be added to, as 
time went on, and this, by the prophets who 
were sent. And where the ordinary teach¬ 
ing body had departed from the way of un¬ 
defiled truth, the extraordinary ambassa¬ 
dors of God, with their new message from 
on high, brought the wanderers back from 
error. 

The Synagogue, endowed with these 
powers, continued its mission through the 
years. Its children fell away from their 
lofty duty, oh, so often! But God’s insti¬ 
tution was not stained by the faithlessness 
of these unworthy ones. It remained the 
gathering of those who, within the elect race, 
held to the true faith in God, and who wor¬ 
shipped the Lord with the cult which was 
pleasing to Him—the type of what was to be 
when the fulness of time had come. 

Yet, as has been said, it was far, very far 
removed from the splendor and sacredness 


216 


MILESTONES 


of what it prefigured. The Synagogue was 
not only a religious society, but a civil one 
as well: the Church, which it foreshadowed, 
whilst in the world, was not to be of this 
world. The Synagogue did not of itself 
confer real, interior sanctification, but gave 
only legal holiness: the Church was to be 
the source of such sanctity of soul as made 
men truly the adoptive children of God. 
The Synagogue was for the people of Israel 
alone, whilst the rest of mankind were 
to come to their Father by the same means 
as had been at hand through the providence 
of God before He gave His law to the 
one nation of His special predilection: the 
Church was to go beyond the boundaries of 
country and nation and to unite all mankind 
in one sacred society under the headship of 
Christ. The Synagogue, as a figure, was to 
last only until the reality would come. 
When the antitype appeared, the type was 
to cease; when the New Law was promul¬ 
gated, the Old Dispensation was to pass 
away. The Church, on the other hand, was 
to last “all days, even to the consummation 


THE CHURCH 


217 


of the world ,” 1 when Christ would come 
again in great power and majesty to judge 
all men. 

We have looked at the type, which was 
the Synagogue: let us turn to the fulfill¬ 
ment, which is Christ’s one, true, Catholic 
Church . 2 

When the fulness of time was come “the 
grace of God our Savior . . . appeared to 
all men . . . who gave himself for us, that 
he might redeem us from all iniquity, and 
might cleanse to himself a people acceptable, 
a pursuer of good works .” 3 He came to 
buy us back from evil, to give His revela¬ 
tion, to establish His religion, and to make 
provision for the safeguard and propagation 
of His holy doctrine and of His saving grace 
throughout all the ages to come. 

The days of Bethlehem and Egypt and 
Nazareth passed away. Then the blessed 
Lord began the weary labors of His public 
ministry of mercy. He preached the gospel 

1 Matt, xxviii, 20. 

2 For a more complete treatment of the doctrine about the 
Church, see the author’s book “Christ’s Masterpiece.” 

a Tit. ii, 11, 14. 


218 


MILESTONES 


of the Kingdom: He drew to His following 
the first disciples. After a whole night 
spent in the prayer of God He chose twelve 
from the disciples, and these twelve He 
called Apostles . 1 

With a vocation immediately divine these 
chosen ones were the objects of our Savior’s 
special love and particular fostering care. 
The twelve were a body apart from the other 
followers of the Master. They were His 
constant and cherished companions, in an 
astounding intimacy of mind and heart. 
To them He spoke more clearly than to all 
the rest of His disciples and in unveiled 
truth instructed them about the Kingdom of 
God, about the children of the Kingdom, 
and about the King who was Himself. 
“The Twelve,” the Apostolic College, were 
sent upon temporary errands of apostolic 
training and missionary effort . 2 Yet, 
blessed as they were with a vocation com¬ 
mon to them all, there was a great and 
striking difference between them; for, all 
of them were not equal. Simon Peter was 

1 Cf. Luke vi, 12-16; Mark iii, 13, 14. 

2 Cf. Luke ix, 1, 2. 


THE CHURCH 


219 


to stand forth from his brethren with a 
dignity and an authority all his own: he 
was to be closer to the Master than any or 
all of the rest; for, that was the will of the 
Christ. 

It was in the country near Caesarea 
Philippi that Christ asked of the twelve: 
“Who do men say that the Son of man is? 
But they *said: Some John the Baptist, 
and other some Elias, and others Jeremias, 
or one of the prophets. Jesus saith to 
them: But who do you say that I am?” 1 
Quite properly did He expect more from 
them than from others, since to them had 
been made known the mysteries of the King¬ 
dom of God. Then Simon Peter, whom 
the Lord had marked out from the day of 
His calling when He had told him that his 
name would be called Cephas 2 (Peter, the 
Rock)—Simon Peter, under the inspiration 
of God, made his glorious profession of 
faith in the divinity of his Lord. “Thou 
art Christ, the Son of the living God .” 3 
“And Jesus answering, said to him: 

1 Matt, xvi, 13-15. 

2 Cf. John i, 42. 

3 Matt, xvi, 16, 


220 


MILESTONES 


Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, 
but my Father who is in heaven. And I 
say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon 
this rock I will build my church, and the 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 
And I will give to thee the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou 
shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also 
in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose 
upon earth, it shall be loosed also in 
heaven. ’ ’ 1 

That was Christ’s promise; that was the 
pledged word of the Son of God. Peter 
was to be the rock, the foundation upon 
w T hich Christ would build His Church. 
That Church was to stand firm forever, 
although the storms would come and the 
winds would blow and the rain would fall ; 2 
but it would stand because it would be 
founded upon the rock. As the foundation, 
Peter was to be the principle of unity and 
stability of the insuperable Church of the 
Christ; and he could be this principle only 

iMatt. xvi, 17-19. 

2 Cf. Matt, vii, 24, 25. 


THE CHURCH 


221 


by the authority which would be able to 
bind together efficaciously all the living 
stones of the temple of God. And such 
authority means “the primacy of juris¬ 
diction, ” that is, the supreme ruling power 
over all the members of Christ’s Church. 
Again, Peter was to be the bearer of the 
keys of the Kingdom of God on earth; and 
by the transfer of the “keys of the King¬ 
dom” from the Sovereign Christ to him 
alone, he was to have the delegated domin¬ 
ion of authority from Him who, by right 
divine, was the Ruler of the City of God. 
And this, too, is “the primacy of juris¬ 
diction.” 

We gaze across the chasm of the Passion 
to the glory of the Risen Lord and by the 
side of the Sea of Tiberias we behold the 
Savior in company with some of His Apos¬ 
tles after their night of fruitless labor. 
There in the morning light bursting across 
the waters of the inland sea, we look upon 
the scene of sweet intimacy between those 
hallowed ones. And there, after the three¬ 
fold questioning, which brought forth the 
triple protestation of Peter’s love for his 


222 


MILESTONES 


Lord, the Master made him the shepherd 
of his flock. “Simon, son of John, lovest 
thou me more than these?—Lord, thou 
knowest all things; thou knowest that I love 
thee.—Feed my lambs: feed my sheep .” 1 
Thus Jesus Christ fulfilled the promise 
uttered at Caesarea Philippi: He made the 
lowly Galilean fisherman the shepherd of 
His whole flock, the head of the Apostles 
and of all His disciples, the ruler of His 
universal Church. 

Such was the position of Peter among 
“the Twelve.” Those who do not see it, 
do not know the institution of the Master: 
those who refuse to accept it, even though 
their refusal be guiltless because of their 
ignorance, refuse to accept the will of the 
Christ, who founded His Church as He 
willed to found it and not as men have 
dreamed that He ought to have founded it. 

Christ had solemnly pledged Himself to 
give the power of ruling the souls of men 
to the rest of “the Twelve,” but in con¬ 
junction with Peter. The power of binding 
and loosing, the authority of jurisdiction 

i Cf. John xxi, 15U7. 



THE CHURCH 


223 


in the realm of the soul was to be committed 

to them too, but with and under Peter . 1 

To the Twelve with Peter the great High 

Priest gave the power of offering in memory 

of Himself the mysterious sacrifice of the 

New Law, the oblation of the body and 

• 

blood of the world’s Victim . 2 To them He 
gave the power of sacramental ministration 
for the sanctification of the souls of men . 3 

And then, before He ascended to His 
glory at the right hand of the Father, He 
gave to these chosen ones, thus prepared 
and thus united under Peter, their mission 
and commission to mankind. On the moun¬ 
tain of Galilee the Christ spoke to them 
the words which are living yet in their 
undying efficacy and which will live on 
until time shall be no more: “All power 
is given to me in heaven and in earth. 
Going therefore, teach ye all nations; bap¬ 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teach¬ 
ing them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have commanded you: and behold I am 

1 Cf. Matt, xviii, 17, 18. 

2 Cf. Luke xxii, 19. 

3 Cf. Matt, xxviii, 19; Luke xxii, 19; John xx, 22, 23. 


224 


MILESTONES 


with you all days, even to the consummation 
of the world .” 1 

This is their commission to teach all the 
sons of men, to teach authoritatively and 
with infallibly true utterance, and to teach 
thus with the sanction of eternal life or 
eternal damnation upon the acceptance or 
the guilty rejection of their words. For, 
the same Christ, to whom all power was 
given in heaven and in earth and who made 
the Twelve partakers of that power, said: 
“Go ye into the whole world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature. He that be- 
lieveth and is baptized, shall be saved: but 
he that believeth not shall be condemned.” 2 

This, then, is Christ’s Church, as its 
Founder made it. It is a visible organiza¬ 
tion of Christ’s Apostles under Peter, their 
chief: it is sent to all the nations of the 
earth to bring all men to the unity of faith 
and worship and religious government, to 
the end that Christ’s religion might be pre¬ 
served and propagated and might bring men 
to holiness here below and finally lead them 

1 Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. 

2 Mark xvi, 15, 16. 


THE CHURCH 


225 


to the eternal blessedness of joy everlasting. 
His Church was not, and was not to be, an 
isolated union of each individual soul with 
God, but a corporate communion with the 
Lord. 

And this it was to be unto the end. The 
mission given to the Apostles was to last 
beyond the term of their mortal existence. 
In them, living forever in their successors, 
it was to last until the consummation of the 
world, with the successful outcome of their 
labors guaranteed by the Christ, who would 
be with them 1 and who would send the Holy 
Spirit to guard them through all days . 2 

In her perpetual mission the Church was 
ever to be in essentials what her Founder 
made her. First of all, she was to be one, 
in such a way that all her children would 
profess subjection to her one authoritative 
and infallible utterance of truth and to her 
one ruling power, which would hold its com¬ 
mission from the Christ. At the same time, 
she was to possess forever the means of 
sanctifying men by sacred doctrine and by 

1 Cf. Matt, xxviii, 20. 

2 Cf. John xiv, 16, 17. 


226 


MILESTONES 


saving sway and especially by the sacra¬ 
mental rites, bearing the streams of Christ’s 
precious blood to the souls of men. Among 
her children she was to have many who 
would mount to moral nobility, some even 
to the dazzling heights of heroic holiness, 
with a constancy and a perpetuity which 
would go beyond the powers of unaided 
nature and beyond the attainment of nature, 
assisted by the ordinary outpouring of 
grace, so that this holiness, as a moral 
miracle, would stamp God’s approbation 
upon her brow. Then too, her mission was 
to reach out beyond the borders of nation¬ 
ality and to bind all men into sacred fellow¬ 
ship with Christ. This Kingdom of the 
Master, this new Israel of God, this chosen 
people of His love was to be catholic (uni¬ 
versal), as wide as the earth itself. And 
finally, as the Church went down through the 
ages, she was ever to be the same apostolic 
body to which the Master gave His ever¬ 
lasting commission of teaching and sancti¬ 
fication and spiritual jurisdiction: in their 
successors the Apostles were to live in her 
forever. 


THE CHURCH 


227 


So, this is the Church of Christ, as Christ 
actually instituted it. This is His Church; 
for, it not only was, but it is in the world 
to-day. It must be. Otherwise, His prom¬ 
ise, “I am with you all days, even to the 
consummation of the world ,” 1 would have 
failed. And that can never be; because He 
said, “ Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
but my words shall not pass away .” 2 

Where, then, is it, this one true Church 
of Christ ? Thank God! we know where it 
is and what it is. And would that all of 
our separated brethren would see it in the 
light of Christ and would come to the 
Mother who holds out longing arms to them 
in their wanderings! Where is it ? Every¬ 
where. What is it ? The One, Holy, Catho¬ 
lic, and Apostolic Church—the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

We call it Roman Catholic, not in the 
sense that it exists only at Rome—for it is 
world-wide; not in the sense that there is 
another Catholic Church besides the Roman 
Catholic—for there is not: but as explaining 

1 L. c. 

2 Luke xxi, 33. 



228 


MILESTONES 


that Rome, by reason of the Apostolic See, 
is the center of the Church whose circum¬ 
ference embraces the world. It is by way 
of clearness of statement that we call the 
Church Roman Catholic, and not by way of 
limitation; for, each of Christ’s own may 
say, “My name is Christian and my sur¬ 
name is Catholic.” 1 

The Roman Catholic Church, and she 
alone, is the Church of Christ our Lord. 
This statement, scoffed at by indifferentists 
and flouted by all non-Catholic bodies, is 
not based on blind prejudice: it is grounded 
on solid fact. And this fact must be 
honestly considered with the eyes fixed 
steadily on the goal of truth. 

To begin with, if we look for Peter, who 
by Christ’s institution must live forever in 
the Church which the Master founded, we 
find him nowhere save in the Catholic 
Church; and the tradition of Christian ages, 
which grasped the truth of the Lord’s insti¬ 
tution, rightly proclaims that where Peter 
is, there and there only is the Church of 
Christ. 

i St. Pacianus Ep. 1 ad Sympron., n. 4. 


THE CHURCH 


229 


Then too, going on to the examination of 
the identifying marks which Christ stamped 
npon His handiwork, we find, first of all, 
that in the Roman Catholic communion all 
her children profess submission to the 
living voice of the one teaching power and 
to the one spiritual jurisdiction over all. 
All the faithful look to the body of the 
bishops and to their chief, the frail man 
who from Peter’s throne teaches and rules 
the w r orld. On the other hand, there is not— 
and let this be noted well—there is not 
on earth to-day any other church which 
dares to speak with the voice of ultimate 
and decisive authority in doctrinal matters. 
She alone is assured enough and brave 
enough to declare the truth of God to all the 
world in unmistakable terms. She is the 
living voice of authority left by the Master, 
who provided for the safeguard of His 
revelation no dead letter of a written word, 
though that word be sacred with the holi¬ 
ness of God’s inspiration, but a voice which, 
through all the years, would sound absolute 
and infallible. 

Besides, she alone has the special holiness 


230 


MILESTONES 


which marks her out as Christ’s own. Of 
course, ordinary uprightness is found in 
her; but this is not all, nor is it enough, 
since it may be and is met with elsewhere 
too. The means of holiness are also hers; 
yet this is not all, nor is it enough, since 
some of these too may be found lopped off 
from their native tree. But besides all this 
and in addition to it, there exists in her, and 
in her alone, the marvel of hosts and legions 
of those whose lives spurn the things of 
earth for the higher holiness of loftier moral 
preeminence, with many and many an in¬ 
stance of heroic self-abnegation and devo¬ 
tedness to God and man, which bear the 
mark of heaven’s approbation by well au¬ 
thenticated miracles. All this is found in 
her, and it is found not in isolated and 
sporadic cases, but with a continuity and a 
permanence which make it her own social 
good, which go beyond the power of mere 
nature or even of the ordinary assistance 
of grace, and which are the testimonial of 
God in her regard. 

And, as for the other two signs of identity 
with Christ’s glorious work, she and she 


THE CHURCH 


231 


alone is spread over all lands and through 
all times, as the same teaching and sancti¬ 
fying and ruling body founded upon the 
Apostles, to whom she alone can trace back 
her origin in an unbroken line of legitimate 
succession. 

Thus, by the test of the primacy of Peter 
and his successors, as well as by the identi¬ 
fying “notes’’ or marks of Christ’s institu¬ 
tion, the Roman Catholic Church is mani¬ 
fested as the true Church of the Savior of 
mankind. Moreover, she is proved to be 
such by another marvel. For, as the Coun¬ 
cil of the Vatican so appositely and truth¬ 
fully declares, the Catholic Church is herself 
a sign or standard set up among the nations 
and bears the stamp of God’s handiwork, 
together with His miraculous approbation 
of her existence and of her rights. “By 
reason of her wonderful propagation” in 
the face of overwhelming obstacles, both 
from within and from without, “by reason 
of her surpassing holiness and her inex¬ 
haustible fecundity in all good works, by 
reason of her catholic unity and her unbro¬ 
ken stability, the Church herself is a great 


232 


MILESTONES 


and perpetual motive of credibility and an 
irrefragable testimony of her own divine 
origin. ’ ’ 1 She stands before the world as 
the accredited ambassador of God, and her 
claim to be the true Church of the Master 
is ratified by the Supreme Lord of all. 

She is the one, only Church of Christ; 
and all others that claim to come from 
Christ are counterfeits. For, the Master 
did not leave behind Him two or a dozen 
or a score or a hundred churches to do His 
work of love. One is His Church; and this 
one Church is necessary for salvation. 

With the consciousness of her divine 
mission and of her unique position, the 
Church clasps her own to her motherly 
heart. But, at the same time, she holds 
forth her hands to those who have not yet 
come to her, and she says, as the Master 
said, “Come to me, all you that labor, and 
are burdened, and I will refresh you .” 2 
Yes, like the Christ, whose Spouse she is, 
she can say: “I am the way, and the truth, 
and the life .” 8 “Come to me.” And the 

1 Denz. n. 1794. 

2 Matt, xi, 28. 

3 John xiv, 6. 


THE CHURCH 


233 


answer of all tlie world should be the one 
which the Apostles made to the Lord when 
He asked them if they would go away from 
Him, “To whom shall we go? Thou hast 
the words of eternal life.” 1 

To the disgust of the indifferentists who 
prate about one religion being as good as 
another, and to the bewildered anger of 
those who reject or scorn her, she says to 
them, as she says to all: * ‘ Come to me; for, 
I am the way fixed by the Master. And he 
who knowingly and willingly and through 
his own fault will live and die separated 
from my communion, shall have no hope 
here or hereafter. ” She says this, because 
she must be true to the mission, given her 
by Christ. And if because she says what 
Christ said—and He said just that—she 
meets with the scoffs of some and the hatred 
of others, she is suffering persecution for 
justice’ sake and she shall have the reward 
promised by Jesus Christ . 2 It is not with 
bitter scorn, but with the yearning that 
springs from the depths of longing love, 

1 John vi, 69. 

2 Cf. Matt, v, 10. 



234 


MILESTONES 


that she speaks to those who are not as yet 
her own; and her words are not, “You are 
not of my fold: God help you!” but, “Be 
of my fold: God bless you!” 

She knows, and she declares, that for such 
as have not yet seen the light of truth which 
wreathes her brow and the splendor of the 
glory which robes her as the Bride of Christ, 
there is still hope because of Christ’s mercy 
for them in their guiltless ignorance. But, 
even then, her love makes her yearn for 
those separated ones and pity them in their 
misfortune. 

For, misfortune it truly is. They may 
come at last to the Christ in heaven. They 
may even now be united with Him. Yet, 
at least comparatively speaking, they are 
in a most pitiable condition. They have, 
indeed, a few of the pearls of truth and 
holiness; whilst hers is the undivided 
treasure-house of God’s beneficence. They 
are cheered by some faint, struggling 
and straggling beams of heavenly warmth; 
whilst her children are basking in the full 
splendor of the sun of justice. They are 
sustaining life with the crumbs which fall 


THE CHURCH 235 

from the Master’s table; whilst her own are 
seated at the banquet feast of love. 

Oh, that blessed, loving, and lovable 
Mother Church! Like the Christ, by whose 
side she stands , 1 she has won more love and 
endured more hatred than any mortal being. 
Persecutions unto blood from the great ones 
of this world and insidious assaults from 
those who called themselves her sons have 
attempted the black work of envy and pride 
and hatred. But the gates of hell have not 
prevailed against her. Yes, she has been 
loved and she has been hated. Yet, all 
through the sweetness of love and all 
through the bitterness of hate she has gone 
on doing her work for men because of God. 
Heaven with its eternal light and gladness 
will show Christ’s own how much they 
owe to their Mother. But only the great 
Searcher of hearts can properly appre¬ 
ciate the spiritual blessings of holiness 
which she has brought to immortal souls. 

Still, over and above these blessings, she 
has showered other gifts upon men, whilst 
she was doing her work through the cen- 

i Cf. Ps. xliv, 10. 


\ 


236 


MILESTONES 


turies. She taught men the value of a 
human soul and she laid the foundations of 
a civilization which recognized the dignity 
of the individual. She saved the remnants 
of a perishing Roman culture and made it 
live in the lives of men, nobler than the 
noblest of pagan days. 

When the wild barbarians rolled the red 
tide of invasion down from the North and 
swept everything away in a sea of blood, 
she tamed the fierce conquerors and made 
them her children: she taught them the arts 
of peace and shaped the beginnings of mod¬ 
ern nations. She lifted her voice against 
the inhuman degradation of slavery, until 
she saw it disappear from most of the earth. 
By the glorious ideal which she put before 
men in the Crusades that strove to win back 
for Christendom the blessed tomb of the 
beloved Savior, she did away with many of 
the objectionable features of feudalism. 

Nor is this the end of the catalogue of 
her benefactions to the world. She has 
uplifted the individual with the holiness 
which *makes men worthy of their destiny, 
and she has guarded his rights against the 


THE CHURCH 


237 


unjust encroachments of a deified State. 
She has consistently and bravely, even 
heroically, stood for the sanctity of mar¬ 
riage against all the evils which disrupt 
the home and drag down the sacredness of 
woman. She has been the true mainstay 
of the State, not only by thus guarding and 
lifting the individual and the family, but 
by standing for liberty against license, for 
authority against chaos, for permanence 
against ruin. 

And for the future ? She holds from the 
Christ the only satisfactory solution of the 
problems of these troublous times—the only 
means which will save society from destruc¬ 
tion. In a word, as the life of the Founder 
of the Church was painted in the few but 
pregnant words, “He went about doing 
good ,” 1 so too the deathless life of the 
Church may be told in the same brief 
utterance. 

With the glories of the Church glowing 
radiantly before us, with the vision of her 
accomplishments through all the years ele¬ 
vating our souls, with the glimpse of the 

i Acts x, 38. 


238 


MILESTONES 


future consummation heartening us, a con¬ 
summation which will transform the mourn¬ 
ing of the days of her sorrowful earthly 
pilgrimage into the ecstatic thrill of an 
everlasting celestial jubilee—with all this 
in view, surely we who are the children of 
the grand old Church need no exhortation 
to be proud of our glorious Mother. 

We need offer no apology to the world 
for being Catholics; rather, we should prize 
this blessing above all dignities. We are 
the children of the Spouse of the Savior of 
the world. We are part of the mystic 
Christ. And should we bow our heads in 
shame and blush for ourselves or for our 
Mother? It is undoubtedly saddening to 
have even to refer to such a thing as shame 
for such a glory. One would say that such 
shame was impossible and unimaginable, 
did not wretched facts speak the disgrace of 
some weaklings who are ashamed of their 
faith and of their holy Mother Church. 

Shame on them! The man who is a- 
shamed of the mother who bore him and 
loved him and labored for him and suffered 
for him is no true man. And the man who 



THE CHURCH 


239 


is ashamed of his Mother the Church is a 
living disgrace to the name of manhood; 
and he will meet his deserts later on. For, 
he who despises the Church despises the 
Christ . 1 How, then, can he dare to look 
for the depth of love-light in the eyes of 
Christ, the Judge, when he shall stand 
before Him ? 

Besides taking pride in our holy Mother, 
we should love her and we should defend her 
against unjust attacks. When blinded big¬ 
ots impugn our loyalty to country because 
of our Catholicity, as they have done for 
years and as they are doing to-day; when 
they hurl against us their vile calumnies, 
black with the hatred of the father of lies; 
we might be judged indulgently for passing 
all this by in lofty disdain or in contemptu¬ 
ous silence—if the attack touched only our¬ 
selves. But, the attack is aimed against 
our Mother; and to pass that by unheeded 
may mean indifference or cowardice. So, 
let us be brave in her defense, in the spirit 
of Christian courtesy and Christian charity, 
but with the strength of Christian dignity 

i Cf. Luke x, 16. 



240 


MILESTONES 


and the bravery of Christian love and 
Christian heroism. 

At the same time, let us never forget that 
the best defense of our loved Mother is to be 
found in the clean, honest, faithful, self- 
sacrificing lives of her children. Many a 
man will fight for a cause; but will not live 
for that cause nor in accordance with its 
principles. Yet, such a one, whilst defend¬ 
ing the object of his boasted love, inflicts a 
wound which goes down deeper than the 
shafts of deadly hatred. Many a man who 
would wish to bring his wandering fellows 
to the truth of God and of God’s own Church 
has built an almost impassable barrier 
across the way that leads home; and he has 
built it by his own life, which is unworthy 
of his Mother, the Church; he has spread a 
thick veil of darkness, through which the 
rays of light can hardly fight their way. 
Let us beware of incurring such an awful 
responsibility; for, it is a heavy burden to 
bear. 

On the contrary, let our lives match our 
prayer, which pleads that the light of the 
true faith may be accepted by all who have 


THE CHURCH 


241 


not yet come to Mother Church. Let us 
remember, too, that to be within the pale of 
the Church’s communion is necessary, but 
that it is not enough, unless the spirit of the 
Church vivifies our hearts and the streams 
of Christ’s life-giving grace flow into our 
souls through the channels of His loving 
mercy. To be a dead limb upon the tree of 
life will avail little. Nay, it will avail 
nothing, until the sap of divine life revivi¬ 
fies the stricken member into a living part of 
the living whole. 

God grant that men may come to God 
along the way which leads by the stages of 
faith and fear and hope and love and re¬ 
pentance, until they have crossed the 
borderland of salvation, as the Church 
lifts them up to God! God grant that these 
same holy dispositions, and especially the 
disposition of whole-hearted and loyal love, 
may work through all the actions of our own 
lives and make us worthy of the Church, 
who is the sacred Spouse of the Bridegroom 
Christ and our own dear blessed Mother! 

Then will the world be better and purer 
and holier because we have lived; then, too, 


242 


MILESTONES 


the endless ages of eternity itself will not be 
too long for the Father of all love to reward 
His dear ones in the ineffable bliss of 
heaven. 

The focus of God’s thrilling love for 
men—a love, which some of His holy ones 
have dared to call “divine folly”—is the 
blood-stained rood that bears the gory body 
of the God-man who died for us. On Cal¬ 
vary Christ won the right to lead men home 
to salvation along the road where He placed 
the Milestones on the Way to Life. On 
Calvary, to use the expression of some of 
the Fathers of the Church, He fashioned 
His Church in that stream of blood and 
water which flowed from His sacred riven 
side. 

Yes, there and then He paid to divine 
justice the price demanded for sanctifying 
grace, which, as true life, was to save His 
dear enemies, His hated loved ones. There 
and then He won the graces which He was to 
bestow upon mankind through all days even 
to the consummation of the world—the holi¬ 
ness of faith and fear and hope and repent¬ 
ance and hallowed love. There and then He 


THE CHURCH 


243 


conquered the right to the absolute de¬ 
votedness of His “little children ,’’ 1 whom 
He committed to His One, Holy, Catholic, 
Apostolic Church. And at the thought of 
what those benefits mean to us and to all 
men; at the memory of the love which made 
Him our Victim and our Priest; may our 
souls, from their very depths, voice the 
prayer, that His precious blood may profit 
those for whom it was shed; that those who 
are not of the fold may come into His 
Church and that there may be but “one fold 
and one shepherd ”; 2 that to us who are 
within the embrace of the Church’s 
motherly arms may be granted the added 
gift of loyal fidelity “now and at the hour of 
our death! ” 3 

1 John xiii, 33. 

2 John x, 16. 

3 The Hail Mary. 



















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